Context : My car is a 2001 3.8L firebird, and has been overheating seemingly at random the past month. There's been days where I drive and nothing goes wrong, and others where the temperature rises way past the 210 mark.

I took it to a shop to talk to the mechanics and the first guy said he thought it was the intake gasket. So we scheduled to have it worked on this week, and in the mean time he said to put stop leak tablets into the radiator since the car had a small puddle of coolant at the top or the engine (hence why they thought it was the intake gasket).

So I go in today, the original guy isn't there but his buddy is and he takes a look at it and says he thinks it isn't the intake, but the head gasket. I told him the most recent over heating issue I had, where I the car got hot less than 15 minutes after start up, but the lower radiator hose wasn't hot like the top one. He explained it and from what I understood, there is compressed gas from the cylinders coming out somewhere from the gasket that pushes the coolant away and it keeps the engine from cooling down.

So my question is, is it really the head? Or am I missing something completely different? The car has new coolant elbows, water pump and radiator installed last year. When it started about a month ago, I noticed it ate through some coolant fairly quickly, so since then Ive been monitoring my coolant on every start up, and it hasn't lost any coolant.

Sorry for the long post but I'm confused and just want to make sure it can be anything else before giving up and saying it's the heads. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks guys!