Hey all,

I'm pretty much new here and have done some searching around, but I wanted to see if you guys have any thoughts on this. I'm a newbie when it comes to cars in general...

When I opened up the top most rad cap to check my coolant level, coolant started to rise and overflow a little bit. I then started up the car with the cap off and more coolant started to flow out.. nothing serious, but it was continuous. It wasn't a geyser and there were no bubbles.

Does it seem like my coolant seals are slowly breaking down and I will need a rebuild soon? I have an 88 TII with about 149,000km.

I am not sure if this has anything to do with it, but I do have to fill up my oil level 2 X's every 250km or so. That's 2 out of the 3 X's in between the F and L. I don't see any oil drips so not sure where all that oil is going.
Thanks in advance.

 

If your coolant itself looks good (no bubbles or bad smells), don't worry about that quite yet...

If you still have the oil metering system on the car, that would explain where some of your oil is going. What do the exhaust tips look like internally? Do you see any smoking on startup?

 

Thanks for your reply Wayne.

I didn't notice any bad smells when I opened the cap, but I didn't go up too close to smell.
Will try later on.

The exhausts look a little black when I look inside.. not too bad. No stains or anything outside though. Very rarely does it smoke and when it does, it looks white and a little blue.

 

So your saying you have to add about a quart of oil every 125 km?

 

I just checked my records. For the last 3 fills, I added:
1.5 quarts after 165km
Over 2 quarts after 209km
2 quarts after 226km

There is a very, very small oil leak as well, so there's where some of the oil is going.

 

You're not going to really know anything until the leaks are fixed, but if you're not smoking, and if you're not eating coolant, you have nothing to worry about at this point. Now you can sleep well, lol...

 

You have 3 radiator caps, always fill from the one above the water pump.