Few things to fix, New and ongoing issue Options

[kagemidnight]

I got my car back with a new 5sfe motor swapped in last week. I have a few kinks that I need to figure out though. First thing is, sometimes my car doesn't start or even turn over. I was told that the battery and alternator are both good but I have a bad terminal on the battery. This seems like an easy fix however, I want to make sure that it is actually the terminals and not something else. I can get it to start without popping the hood and making sure the terminal is snug on the battery, I just pop the clutch in and out a few times and it will usually start up.
Second problem is something that I just noticed today. My car was idling for a few minutes while I ran into a parts store, when I got back in I noticed that the temp was almost all the way up at the H. The second I start to drive the temp drops back down to normal. I somehow had a puncture in the top of my radiator cap so I replaced it thinking it had something to do with that, new cap,coolant is fine and it still idles hot. I took the vacuum hose off my intake and put a breather filter where it goes into the engine last night, could this be what is causing it? Please let me know, I would really appreciate it.
thanks.

This post has been edited by kagemidnight: Oct 13, 2009 - 11:49 AM

[kagemidnight]

brought it to toyota while I was on break today because the exhaust was pouring out white smoke while idling, not just on start up. BAM, blown head gasket...... If I can get this fixed hopefully it will be the cure to the hesitation/studdering as well. But what was the cause of the blown head gasket? The motor only had about 60k on it and my mechanic told me it looked near mint when he pulled it apart and did the swap recently.

[soulshadow]

The motor only had about 60k on it and my mechanic told me it looked near mint when he pulled it apart and did the swap recently.

What? He pulled the head off the motor? I hope he used a new gasket, cause once its off it needs a new one.