Bad head gasket?

In the last few months my mj has been loosing water consistantly with no leaks from the hoses. The only place i can see coolant leaking is from the bellhousing/back of the motor. The funny thing is it does not run hot at all, and i havent noticed any power loss.

im pretty sure the headgasket is bad. I've heard that when headgaskets go bad, the compression from the cylinders goes into the cooling system pressurizing it. My coolant pressure bottle blew up the other day, so im guessing that is another indicator of the head gasket.

Its an 88 mj with 167k. I'd just like some reassurance before i go tearing into it. thanks.

Does NOT sound like a head gasket to me.

Head gaskets fail in one of two modes (sometimes both, but rarely): 1. Compression leak between two adjacent cylinders; 2. compression leak from one cylinder into a water jacket.

Either mode will show up in a simple compression test. If one cylinder is low and you show other symptoms, look for mode 2. If two adjacent cylinders are lower than the other 4, look at mode 1.

If the leak is between one cylinder and a water jacket, usually that cylinder sucks in coolant on the intake stroke and the exhaust shows visible white-ish steam that has a sweet smell to it.

There is a coolant freeze plug on the back end of the block. Sounds to me like yours may have rusted out.

Wow, i didnt even think about that freeze plug. Now that you mention it, i remember seeing it when i've had the tranny out. I just got done checking the oil and noticed some rusty crap on the dipstick which points to that freeze plug as well. The coolant is also kind of brown, which i thought was from oil being mixed with it, but maybe it is rust from that freeze plug. I guess the only way to know for certain is to pull the tranny in order to get to that plug.

Thanks for the opinion, you may have saved me quite a bit of work.