Coolant Disappearing?

[jsomethingk]

I have a '98 Camry LE with about 113,000 miles on it. Recently, I've noticed that it starts to overheat when it idles for more than, say, 60 seconds. I discovered that the coolant reservoir was almost completely dry two days ago, which was surprising in and of itself as a friend had topped it (and the oil) up only three weeks ago. I refilled it and checked the oil, which was fine. When I checked this morning, the coolant reservoir was empty again.

There's no visible coolant leak from the car, as far as I can tell - no puddle on the ground where it's parked or anything. It doesn't overheat when I drive, and in fact seems to cool once it's out of park/idle. What are the possible problems I'm facing, here? I've heard everything from "probably nothing" to "head gasket blown" suggested.

[Joe W]

There could be two problems here.The thermostat is probably the overheating culprit.You should also have the cooling system pressure checked.

[MW in VT]

I've had the same problem on my 93 camry V6. One day the car started to overheat - the overflow tank was empty, and I was down about 1.5 qts on coolent. Refilled radiator and overflow to "full" and test drove. The car would use the entire overflow tanks worth of coolent every 40 mile interstate trip - Ive only taken 3 since then.

What I've done so far:

Drained oil to see if coolent getting into oil - none found,

Pulled all spark plugs - pretty clean, only 1 with a very very slight hint of chalky coating (have been told if coolent getting into combustion chamber, spark plugs will look "too" clean, and will be white)

Took to dealership for pressure test - pressurized coolant system to look for external leaks and pressurize each cylinder (TDC on comp stroke) and look for leakdown and bubbles in radiator or coolent being pushed back into overflow tank.

They said they found a bad leak in #6 cylinder.

Estimate: $1625 parts and labor ($291 parts and 18 hrs labor) for head gasket replacement... if all goes well, ie. no cracked block/heads, cylinder scoring, etc...

The other option they gave was to put in a used 60k mile engine ($1800 + 18 hrs labor) for a total $3134. Dont think its worth it.

For now, I am taking a crack at changing the head gaskets myself. Got everything off now but the heads - found lots of coolent leakage from under intake manifold, lots of oil leaking from head gaskets. Having a hard time getting timing belt pulleys off off end of cam shafts though.

Hope your situation is better.