1994-2002 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
I have a 97NG with about 120K miles. Now that it is nice and cold, I've noticed my car seems smokey. Lots of white exhaust when idling. Drove 6+ hours yesterday and still "smokey" at the end of trip when idling.
There has been a slow loss of coolant over the past few years -- maybe 1/8 of an inch every few months. Yesterday, after the drive, I noticed that there was green fluid around my lower radiator hose. Hose is old and is on the replace list -- just was hoping it would last until it warned up outside. That could explain some of the fluid loss. There is also some evidence of seepage at the thermostat housing.
What I am more worried about is a head gasket leak. There is very bad oil seepage on the outside of the head. No oil in coolant reservoir. There is some junk on the sides, but it looks more like dried out coolant than oil. My Mobil 1 oil is perhaps more "mocha" colored than the black I am used to. would not describe it as "milky" yet. The oil has about 2000 miles on it.
My question is if I do a compression test, will I be able to determine if I had a leak vs. a seepage? How much damage am I doing by continuing to drive in there is coolant seepage. Another small mystery is if there was a coolant leak, shouldn't that steam help clean the combustion chambers? When I changed my plugs I noticed it was very black in there -- combination of short city tips and the 7ES plugs (bad, I know)
I've planned another set of repairs for the spring (oil coolant lines, lower PS line, radiator hoses, intercooler lines, turbo oil lines, AC lines, aforementioned lower radiator hose). My SRS light just came up, and I think that I managed to damage the clock spring in the cold. So I'm just being cheap -- would rather not do both rather major repairs at the same time if possible.
posted by 76.189.7...
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