Possibly a head gasket?

[Teardrop]

car (and likely the engine too) has about 194,000 miles. 3.4 Grand Prix GTP

Looking thru head gasket symptoms, some look familiar but some things don't add up.
Tell me your thoughts -

Signs that say maybe -
There seems to be a bit more water coming out of the tailpipes than normal, sometimes leaves small puddles on ground if sitting idling a while, like say 5 minutes or more. Said water does not have any taste. Exhaust smells funky but not sweet, almost sulfuric, but is not colored. Not like white smoke. Coolant system seems to be losing more than normal, I will guesstimate maybe I need to add one cup every 200 miles. The recent external leak was fixed.

Recent issue - the idle seems like it was a bit rougher than normal today. Maybe my paranoia. Not nasty bad but just not perfect like it has been.

Lacking signs -
Heater works well. At highway speeds, the temp holds steady.
However, when city driving, it will work it's way slowly to the 210 mark and soon after kicks on the fan, then temp drops to 210'ish or below.

Engine oil looks good, no sign of "chocolate milk" or "mayo". Engine IS losing a bit of oil but from an external leak that I can't find. (It is slow, not from the previously fixed distributor plug)

So, I honestly think gaskets might have a tiny leak. My questions -

1) if the gasket(s) fail, will the engine slowly degrade performance and such or will it be like one day I go out and start it and it runs like crap? Most times when I had a bad head gasket, it was like that when I got the car so it was already degraded.

2) If I have to do this, How bad a job am I in for if I need to do this? Will there be steps in removing that will turn out to be a nightmare, like disconnecting the exhaust?

Other engines I have done head gaskets before - Zetec (4 banger contour), 2.8 and 3.1 GM engines, 2.2 chrysler (4 banger K car engine) Is it any worse than any of those (for anyone who has experience with those.)

[pocket-rocket]

It does sound a bit like you do have a bad head gasket because of the exhaust moisture. I've seen bad gaskets go both ways as far as degraded performance or just blowing out one day. Have you tried renting a coolant system pressure tester and pump the cooling system up to see if you can hear where it is leaking from? Honestly, in my experience, GM V6 exhaust nuts/bolts have never really given me a problem coming off. I've never even had to heat one up with a torch to move it. Since you have done a DOHC (the Zetec) before, this won't be a total nightmare for you if you decide to tackle it. The DOHC isn't as bad of an engine to work on as people think. I remember when I put my ported and polished heads on my 92. I got home from work around 1pm, started teardown around 3pm, stopped at sun down (~7pm or so), got up the next day around 9 and by noon I was firing it up. The one big difference between you and I is I know this engine and have had my hands in them more times than I can remember. But, with the fact out there that you know how to turn a wrench works out well in your favor and I would say you really shouldn't have any problem doing the job. You will want to make a set of cam hold down tools for timing setting purposes, though. You will not want to just start twisting on the cam bolt without another form of holding the cam besides the hold downs. The hold downs only use a 10mm bolt threaded into aluminum and will strip out, so do not rely on them to hold the cams while you honk down on the cam pulley bolts. Sometimes you can get lucky and find a Kent-Moore special tool kit for the DOHC on ebay at a decent price that will include the 2nd holding tool for the cam pulleys themselves.