I opened the coolent reservoire to add antifreeze but when I did I found brown creamy pudding like substance inside... it over heated a few times and orange stuff is all over under by Hood. .what could be the problem....

 

The brown stuff is motor oil mixed with the coolant. It happens because of a bad head gasket or a crack in the engine block or head letting it leak out of the oil system and into the cooling system.

 

How much is it to fix...

 

Depends on what is truly wrong and who you take it to. I once drained brown fluid out of a coolant system, but it was because the driver was stuck at the lake with a blown coolant hose, and she refilled the system with lake water to get home. More than likely, though, it's the head gasket.

The head needs to be removed so the head gasket can be examined. The head should be resurfaced as a cheap insurance policy to make sure the mating surface is perfectly flat. The block and head both should be examined for cracks. In the process, the coolant system should be flushed and the oil changed.

This is labor intensive so it can be pretty expensive.

 

^+1 it may mean you need a new motor, which I think is the case. Change your oil, and flush your coolant. Clean everything under the hood. Start her up again and drive around, and see what happens. If you get oil everywhere again, then pull your motor and do some surgery.

 

If its the head gasket I found a steel one for 50 bucks online... how much will it normally be to change it... I doubt the engine is cracked because it doesn't over heat easily... only when there is no antifreeze in the radiator which I have to do once a week...

 

You will need to take your head off, it might be around 70 pounds, to get to the gasket. If the head and block don't mate right, the gasket will blow again or you might still leak oil. Anyway, I would HIGHLY suggest you pull your motor and get it to a machine shop to resurface block and head. Get a felpro headgasket, not eBay junk. It is important to get quality for head gaskets.

Step one: clean everything under tour hood
Step two: see where oil leak is coming from
Step three: if its head gasket, pull motor, take to shop
If its a cracked block or head, replace/rebuild.

 

I've yet to find any evidence to justify completely pulling a motor for a head gasket, in most cases. I know the head/mating surface on the motors in our cars is prone to damage, but that still doesn't seem like a blanket-cause to automatically pull the motor, since that is an absurd amount of work, compared to just changing the gasket in-car. You can always take the head to a shop alone and have it checked before doing all the work, and save yourself the massive headache of unhooking the entire motor and getting it all working right again later.

 

Ya, but what if the surface of the block is warped? Then you have to do the work twice. Without being there to see it, its better to do it by the book. And pulling a motor really isnt hard...

 

That's my point. If you pull the head and its warped, then by all means have the block checked. But why bother going to all the effort of pulling a motor without checking first? And is it really that common for the heads/block to warp so bad that they cant be repaired? I've had a couple pretty major head failures, one of them on a drag car, and the block was still perfectly salvagable.