13Beast REW

I'm not asking any questions about whether or not my coolant seals are gone... I've been pretty convinced that they're gone for a while now and the car has been sitting for several months.

For whatever reason (bordem maybe) I started the car up a few weeks ago. It didn't seem to be loosing too much coolant so from time to time I'll drive it a few miles down the street to the car wash (do-it-yourself not mechanical) and spray it down. The car always makes it to the car wash and back without the coolant buzzer goin off, the temp gauge rising or any coolant spilling from the overflow. Blah blah blah... onward to last night.

I feel like eating out and olive garden is a mile from the car wash so I say why the hell not and top the car off with coolant before I leave. About a third of the way there, the coolant buzzer goes off while i'm sitting at a red light next to a gas station (lucky me). As soon as it went off, before the light even turned green, I turned and pulled into the gas station, parked the car and turned it off. I already knew what the deal was with my car so I keep loads of water/coolant in the trunk (call it my own carelessness for driving it in this condition or complete lack of respect for my wallet in terms of engine rebuild cost, END result is its my business if I want to drive the car like this).

I end up pouring about a half gallon of water into the car. Now I'm like "what the hell?" but I decide to press on. I put the caps back on the neck and AST, start the car up and drive the rest of the way to Olive Garden without any problems.

I eat my food and now its time to drive home. I check the coolant end up pouring about a half quart (a pint?) of water into the car and drive all the way home no problem until I'm done backing the car into its normal parking spot (the coolant buzzer went off, I turned the car off let it sit with the fans for a while then went inside).

Today (FINALLY!)....
Need to wash the car again, or maybe I just wanted to drive it (its been down since November... lazy me). I pull the caps off since I know the coolant is low... WTF!? The coolant isnt that low! Needs less than a cup of water!(gotta love US measurements (imperial for u flaming perfectionist asswipes)).

Blah blah blah... I top the coolant off, this seems really weird to me so I decide to do the champagne test just to see what going to happen... Start the car up and to my surprise (and the amusement of a few spectators) I get Old Frickin Faithful.

I shut the car off, say WTF a few times, and just because I dont know what else to do at the moment, I go to the engine bay and notice the coolant is STILL AT THE TOP OF THE FILLER NECK even after the fantastical Wet N' Wild Rotary Water Show! Say WTF a few more times and start sqeezing coolant hoses trying to see if some bubbles will come up and make the coolant sink down into the coolant system... no luck, it just spills out.

I put the cap on the AST then, for whatever reason (I'm crazy if you haven't noticed by now), I get back in the cockpit, push a few buttons, turn a few *****, and flipped a switch and the 13B-REW ground assault vehicle came back to life (turned the a/c on and turned the key). This time... the coolant simply flows out of the neck at a steady rate. I let the engine run with just the radiator cap off for about 63 seconds more... the rate the coolant was flowing out stayed the same and never stopped.

FINALLY I turn the car off put the radiator cap back on and repeatedly recite WTF? as I take my *** back in the house and begin writting this wonderfully entertaining yet incriminating narrative.

and again I ask.... WTF!?

XSTransAm

maybe your thermostat is stuck closed?

ive never had this problem, but thats the only thing i can think of.

how do you know your seals are gone? are you burning white smoke? to know for sure you should get a pressure test.

13Beast REW

I dont know for sure but it just seems to make sense. While I was letting the car run for that one minute I took a piece of metal and held it up to the exhaust and it fogged up. Seems like coolant in the exhaust to me.

IRPerformance

iTrader: (41)

The coolant seal REALY let go! I've seen this happen on a customer's car before. Previous owner must have done the blockeweld procedure. Eventually it will just give and fail catostrophically.

BigIslandSevens

iTrader: (4)

Ditto that.

I had a customers do the same thing. Most will when the coolant seals really go. It is the combustion pressure from the engine going straight into the coolant system. Hence, " Old Faithful". Just get in line for a reman or parts to rebuild the engine you have. Although, after all that driving with bad seals to start with I would just get a reman and send it away if you want any work done to it. Give Gotham a call for a worked over engine and call Ray Crowe and get on the waiting list for a reman.

Sorry to hear the bad news but it sounds like you knew it was coming.

Garrett

I had the same geyser effect right before my coolant seals gave out. I was parked at a McDonald's when my buzzer went off. So I grabed a shirt, so the hot pressured spray wouldn't melt my arm and clicked the cap off, blahdow! I had a geyser for around 7 steady seconds. Some dude in the parking lot had no idea what to think.

This had never happened before when I replinished the water before and by night time I was pouring white smoke from the exhaust.

13Beast REW

Not tryin to flame you or anything so please dont get offended but... that was real dumb just takin the cap off like that. If you MUST take the cap off when the car is hot then turn the cap SLOWLY but keep ALOT of downward pressure on it while turning it. Once you've turned it all the way SLOWLY let up on the force you're using to hold the cap down until either hot air vents out or the coolant/water starts to spit out. Once that starts happening keep that amount of pressure down on the cap until its stops spitting out air/coolant.

To the other guys thanks for the input. Its nice to know that with my toddler level knowledge of the 13B I'm actually able to figure out whats goin on in there.

HOWEVER... bordem has struck once again and I am in the middle of yet one more adventure (although much less entertaining to me this time). A rather simple procedure actually. I just finished removing the thermostat and as soon as I finish writting this I'll be on my way to the kitchen to test it out. I also have a new (cheap one) handy just incase I find it to be problematic.

I'll be doing the engine rebuild myself, port work on the other hand... while I'm crazy enough to do it myself (I've seen it done on a few 12A's), I'm not comfortable at all with my ability to do it right... but then again no one is until they've done it the first time. Hmm...

13Beast REW

Oh... one more thing... just want to clarify this to anyone that doesn't understand... the geyser (am I even spelling that right?) happened on a cold engine. eg. it wasn't pressure from a hot coolant system venting out. Definately seems to be combustion gases forcing coolant out, yet strangely enough, I get no smoke out of the exhaust at startup, no rough idle, and no poor engine performance (yes I did beat the hell out of the car the first time I got it running again and yes, the car (whihc is 100% stock) is still running over SRT-4s meaning the engine is otherwise healthy).

Anyway enough of that, I've got a thermostat to test.

13Beast REW

Been slacking off, finally tested the thermostat. The results... well... It didn't start opening until 192 degrees when its supposed to open between 179 and 182, and it only opened 5.5 mm @ 212 degrees when minimum full open @ 203 degrees is 8mm. End result is that the old thermo was bad.

But thats still not good news. Don't know how long the thermo has been bad and its possible that it may have been the reason my seals are/could be bad.

I'll be installing the new thermostat in a few minutes. I'll post if that changes anything or not.

Garrett

My cap used to have a valve on it to relieve the pressure first but that time it didn't work or was a little too hot. Believe me, this was VERY unusual for my car and I had done the same procedure just about everyday up until that point for a few weeks. I'm not sure why it happened but it did. Needless to say, I don't do that anymore.

13Beast REW

Glad to hear that .

On the other side of things... Got the thermostat installed yesterday, filled the car with mostly water for the moment (there's some coolant in there somewhere). Right now the coolant isnt leaking its idling a little high (900-1000) but steady, and never a coolant buzzer until there's actually load on the engine (eg the car must be moving).

While parked I can rev the engine as much as I want no problem. I held 5000rpms for about a minute, then 6000 for a little less but no coolant spilled and no coolant buzzer. Let it idle for a few minutes, put it in 1st and drove maybe about 100 ft and then the coolant buzzer went off. Put it in reverse backed back to the original parking spot, put it in neutral, pulled the e-brake, turned the lights off, reached for the key but the coolant buzzer went off before I could grab the key.

I'm still convinced that the culprit is a bad coolant seal but on the optimistic side of things the last problem I had also depicts air in the coolant system which is an easy fix. I decided to let the car cool on its own and went in side.

I'll add a little coolant if needed when I get home from work and post the status of the car then.

Detbyron

If your coolant seals are bad...
When the cars running, the exhaust gas is pushing past the seal into your coolant system, and out through the overflow tank. Let the engine warm up and the [new] thermostat open, and check for that. Also, if you take off the cap on the aluminum filler neck, you should see tiny little exhaust gas bubbles.
When the car is not running, coolant is going to seep past the seals into the engine. Thus on start-up you should get the white smoke.
You should be filling coolant the next day after every drive because of seepage into the engine and overflow from the overflow tank.
My experience with the coolant buzzer, it should only go off if it is dry. If it is wet, but not immersed in water, it should not go off. Thus, if it is buzzing, I believe your coolant level has already been low for a while.

But in the end, get a compression test done before pulling the friggin' engine!

P.S. your narratives are funny!

13Beast REW

AND NOW.... FINALLY.... The update on my car....
After toping off the cooling system with mostly water, as I said earlier... I started the car up and immediately started driving it, before it even had a chance to try to warm up. OK, maybe not that fast... I at least waited for the cold start to cut off (yes, I know the tricks to kill cold start without revving the motor but I didn't feel like it). Anyway... after cold start (ok let me say it correctly, I already know someone is going to "kindly" correct me without my permission anyway... ahem... Accelerated Warm-up. See... I even put a hyphen in there )

OK ANYWAY... I was able to drive the car 30 MILES STRAIGHT with no buzzer, no leaking, no change in engine temp. So at that point I'm still not convinced that the problem is resolved. At the end of the 30 miles (mostly driving in circles around the fine city of Fort Lauderdale) I wind up at ASI Racing and turn my car off. Some of you may be familiar with the red ASI FD featured in Modified Mag in April of this year.

After some small talk with ASI's Chad and John, I look under the car for coolant puddles... NONE! Then I journey off yet again into the wild unknown. Not even a mile down the road at a red traffic light... BEEEEEEEEEEP! There were no WTFs this time as I was kind of expecting it. As coincidence would have, I once again find myself RIGHT NEXT TO A GAS STATION.

So, just like last time, instead of waiting for a green light, I weave my way over the gas station, park up, pop the hood, vent the coolant pressure and fill her up; about half a quart again, not much at all. At this point I'm a little leery but half a quart just seems like I worked some more air out of the system and... I press on! Am I crazy or just overly optimistic with all of my pessimism...

Well... the final rundown is this... after the gas station I put another 60 miles on the motor, even being so daring as to touch redline a few times within the last 20 miles. From the gas station back to FD's familiar parking spot there were no anomalies. OK that’s a lie, one of my solenoids are busted or the hose is off of it since my idle is oscillating between 800 and 1200 RPM. Other than that though, the FD is operating as normal.

One more escapade to go through tomorrow and I'll make the final verdict as to whether the FD is fixed or not.

Rotory

iTrader: (1)

best thread ive seen in awhile and im a 2nd gener hope everything comes out alright with your 7 man.

13Beast REW

Ok, time to be honest here. I took a real big chance and decided to drive the FD to work today. So tack on an additional 30 successful miles on the motor. Here's the deal though...

A noticable amount of coolant is still escaping the car from somewhere. Its still possible it could be the coolant seal but I'm not so sure anymore. This morning I checked the coolant level before the drive to work and still a half quart was needed.

Now, where to attribute this loss to is a toss up because the cap on the coolant filler neck is somewhat questionable. That cap came off of a stock AST from another 94 touring and for whatever reason the rubber seal on it was a larger diameter than the one on my AST. Either way I ended up cutting it because I was being impatient and wanted to work on my car immediately rather than wait for a new cap (that I still haven't ordered yet) to be delivered. I check both caps for leakage everytime I'm done driving and have yet to notice any from either cap.

The pressure under these caps when removing one when the car is hot, is consderably less than its been in the past 6-8 months. It takes a little less than a minute to vent the pressure now when it used to take several minutes.

So less pressure is actually comforting as well as raising some eyebrows here. The common knowledge is, more cooling system pressure, higher temps before boiling, thus more efficient cooling. Feel free to correct me here as I'm just pulling this off the top of my head.

The bottom line is theres no noticable leakage from the overflow, or radiator caps but one of the caps is still suspect. Coolant seals are still suspect as well. Finally, there may be leakage somewhere else in the cooling system like hoses and my radiator may need to be flushed as well. I'll keep driving the car and checking on as many of these as possible and since the car is actually mobile again I'll be looking into getting the cooling system pressure tested.

Gotta just love these long posts.

cruiser

If your coolant seals arent shot yet, they will be if you will continously run out of coolant

Detbyron

Do you have pressure caps on both the AST and the Filler Neck?
The AST should have a pressure cap
The Filler neck should not have a pressure cap

Personally, I had magic disappearing coolant. It ended up being the coolant hose going into the engine near the spark plugs. It would vent as vapor but never drip fluid, so I never had a puddle.
The point is, deffinatly check all your cooling-system lines for leaks!

"30 miles straight with no change in coolant temp"
How do you know this? Do you have an aftermarket gauge, or did you do the stock linearization mod? Or are you basing this off the stock gauge? I'm sure you know the stock gauge is un-responsive until overheat or damn-close-to-it.

Dammit, get a compression test!

13Beast REW

Thats why I check the coolant everytime before starting the car. I usually won't check it inbetween my starting location and destination because pulling the coolant caps is going to make the car regurgitate some coolant no matter how slowly you vent the pressure.

Right now I'm troubleshooting a problem not just working around it. My problem is loss of coolant inbetween drives which eventually causes the coolant buzzer to go off and engine temps to rise. Therefore, to accurately gauge the amount of coolant loss, I have to wait for the car to cool on its own.

FormerPorscheGuy

Your engine is gone.

13Beast REW

That very well may be the case but I doubt that I'm alone in my skepticism. Especially since yesterday I drove the FD a total of around 80 miles and let it cool on its own over night and this morning I actually measured the amount of water that I poured in. This morining I added one and a half cups of water (12 fl oz) which is less than half of what I had to add the day before.

If the problem were coolant seals doesn't it make sense that the amount of water burned off would be higher than that?

Tomorrow evening I'll flush the cooling system and put 50/50 coolant in there instead of the dilluted mixture thats in there now.

RotorJoe

Its not hard to get a pressure test done on your cooling system.

Enconsiderate

true! it seems like you have been doing a lot of work to only guess at your problems. why haven't you had a pressure test done? not to undermind what you have tested but its the only sure way to get your answer.

btw.... your great at telling stories. i was laughing almost all wat through!

13Beast REW

I haven't taken her to get pressure tested mainly because I haven't had time. I doubt that makes sense to anyone out there so I'll elaborate just a little bit. I work a 9 to 6 with a 1.5 hour commute each way which effectively equates to me getting home between the hours of 7 and 8.

That said, some might suggest that I drop the car off when I go to lunch. That would be nice except I have yet to see a single car shop (repair or parts) in the area I work (I haven't even been able to find a fast food joint). From what I've heard, the people can afford to have their Porsche Turbo and Carrera (and the not so rare Ferrari owner) mechanics come to their house and take the car if need be. Add to the equation that the people I work with come from the same area or close (or just pretend like they do) and you have a set of coworkers that are 100% dehomogenized, pasturized, pacified, pansy little ********. (WOW! I just said pansy. Yea, that's my que to end this right here)

Trexthe3rd

1. You can rent a pressure tester from Autozone.
2. I had the same irratic symptoms on and off for 6 months, when the seal completely gives, and it will soon. You'll have a lovely thick white cloud from your tail pipe. (many times I can go days without seeing any of the symptoms, I have even taken the car to the track)