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1994-2002 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
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Hello everybody,
I have a massive coolant leak on my 97 900 SET and I just want to see if anyone may have an idea of something that I could be overlooking. Hopefully my troubleshooting skills are up to par and I am on the correct path to get this taken care of.
Here's the backstory:
My wife and I were running errands on a 50-55f degree day. After an hour or so of running around, we stopped for lunch. After eating, we got back in the car, reversed out of the parking space, and noticed a huge amount of liquid left in the space; about then, a low coolant warning came across the SID. I glanced at my temp gauge, and it was where it normally is, 9 o'clock.
I parked the car, turned it off, checked the fluid on the ground, and it was indeed coolant. My reservoir tank was bone dry. I ran across the street to a gas station and bought some pre-mixed coolant, refilled the reservoir tank and turned the car back on. Most of the coolant was slowly pulled into the system, and I didn't see any visible leaks, but I could tell that there was some coolant that had been sprayed somewhere in the engine bay, towards the front. I turned the car back off, topped off the coolant and then let the car run for about 10 minutes to see if I could find any leaks. I could not.
My wife and I slowly drove home (about 4 miles in stop and go traffic) with the heat on and windows down, and I kept an eagle eye on the temp gauge. It never rose past 9 o'clock.
After arriving home, I parked the car on the street and turned it off. We checked under the hood and the coolant was a little lower than when I had topped it off. All of a sudden, we heard some weird gurgling noises and the coolant came rushing back into the reservoir and boiled over and out of the cap.
At this point, I thought it could be a few different things.
1. The reservoir cap was leaking or damaged and changing the boiling point of the coolant.
2. The thermostat was not working or stuck
3. The cooling fan was not running, and not providing enough airflow through the engine bay to keep everything cool.
A few days later, I swapped the thermostat and the reservoir cap, and refilled the coolant. When I drained the fluid to replace the thermostat, there was no oil in it. I checked the oil and didn't see any coolant on the dipstick. It did not smell like a cooked head gasket, so my fingers are crossed for that.
I started the car back up and let it run, and this time I noticed that the temp rose more quickly to its normal 9 o'clock position than it used to. Nothing alarming, it warmed at about the same rate as our Civic. I checked under the engine bay and didn't see any leaks, and I waited for the cooling fan to engage, but it did not. I turned on the AC to see if it would engage then, and it did not. I have one on order from eBay.
I took the car for a short, gentle drive, and once again, I got a "coolant low" message across the SID. I was about 2 blocks from home, so I slowly drove the rest of the way with the heater on and windows down, but once again, my temperature gauge never went past 9 o'clock and I could not hear the cooling fan cycling on or off.
After getting home, I opened the hood and saw that the reservoir was again, bone dry. No gurgling or boiling over this time, but there was a bunch of coolant that looked like it had sprayed from somewhere around the front of the engine, between the valve head and the block.
I waited for the engine to cool down, replaced my broken rear decor panel in the meantime, and set about taking off the DIC and valve cover to see what was going on.
When I removed the DIC, I found a small bit of oil inside the area where the DIC goes. Sounds like a leaky valve head to me.
I didn't have the correct bit to check the head bolts, so I had to go buy it, and by the time I came home it was dark, so I called it a day.
Here's my plan and thinking, and if you're still with me after this long story, thanks! :)
I'm going to go to the local indie and buy a new set of headbolts, and check each one on mine. I will replace anything that needs to be retorqued with a new bolt. I'm up to speed from reading the archives about the bolt styles and torque specs, so I should be good there (Thank you ANDERS!!!) Hopefully, this will take care of the issue, if not, then I may have a warped head or damaged gasket, and I'll have to have it machined and replace the head gasket.
If you guys see anything that I may have missed, let me know. Hopefully I have caught this problem before the head warped. Again, if you took the time to respond or to read this, I really appreciate it, and hopefully it can help someone in a similar situation. The archives are a huge help. Thanks everyone!
posted by 168.200...
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