Loosing Engine Coolant - Somewhere!

September 27, 2007

hi guys,

Apologies if this has already been covered in another thread, hopefully you guys can give me some good advice. i recently just got a '93 st185, and i was aware that the previous owner had some over heating problems and that it caused a little damage - and in trying to find out why, he replaced the radiator, water pump and thermistat. anyways i went ahead with it and it drives fine with no apparent problems, other than i notice that i am loosing engine coolant somewhere. now at the moment there is just water in there (i have the toyota red stuff ready to be put in but i dont want to loose it when i put it in!) and we know these bad boys get really hot under the hood so i was thinkin maybe its just boiling away. well to cut the long story short i had my uncle and grandad take a look (mechanics in their day) and they both reckon could be head gasket or at worse crack cylinder head :( im heart broken as i still havent even paid for the car yet! :unsure: so shes in the garage just now, one recommended by a friend who is rebuilding his mk1 MR2 with them. the guys are going to do a pressure check cold and another when shes hot to see if that reveals anything.

the amounts that i am loosing ill try and give an example - topped her up to the brim then did 200mile round trip. when i went to top her up on my return i poured in water from a petrol can (all i had at the time) and she took about 1-2 inches from looking at the the level of water in the can.

am i ok to just keep an eye on coolant levels and top up when i need to and continue driving as normal or could this be doing more damage?

does anyone have any advice on what this could be? and what costs might be involved? no matter what she needs if i can afford it ill put the money into her to get her back up and running properly again.

any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

cheers

Dave

September 28, 2007

the first thing to do is pressure test it, if it's the head gas it would prob leak more, is the engine wet in a certain place, or it could be the first signs, take the spark plugs out and check how well there burning as this could tell u if there's water in the cylinders, or you could look insider the cylinder through the plug holls and check if theres water on top of the pistons, this is if there is no water on the outside of the engine, or you could put some strong food colouring in, check first, and that would leave a clear indication where its comming from, also does she use oil if not the head gas is probally ok

November 26, 2007

Well just to update incase it helps anyone else - i put the car into a specialist in perth called AWD for a checkup. they hooked up their diagnostics equipment to the car so that the car can talk to the kit via voltages etc and they came back and said the engine is actually fine, its in good condition for its age no problems at all even HG etc. they also pressure tested the cooling system hot and cold ...couldnt find any leaks, the system held the pressure fine. so needless to say i was stumped at these results...but greatful it wasnt HG! they saw i had an uprated radiator cap on, a 1.3bar TRD one and the Badge on the top seemed to lift a little as if it was coming loose and they have advised me to replace this with a standard one. the conclusion they came to was that the pressure was getting too much in the system that it was overflowing the reservoir tank and out the overflow pipe on top. right enough i could see some sort of corrosion around that area where boiling coolant would have been spraying out. they reckon ive been losing it on motorway driving which would explain why i couldnt trace it and also explains why i could only see that i lost coolant after big journeys. i did some checks and the standard radiator caps are only 0.9bar so there is a difference. ive ordered a cap and pick it up tomorrow so i guess ill just have to try it and see!