ok.....heres my problem.....car tends to flood everytime i shut it off....once i do manage to get it started....i smell a strong coolant burning smell......smoke everywhere, enough to make people think my car is on fire....and coolant level seems to disappear over the course of a few days......pretty much all the signs of blown coolant seal....however the car idles steady at 700rpm and i dont see any bubbles coming out of the t-stat housing when the car is running....i also have sparks flying out near the exhaust/turbo area and the turbo spool up noise sounds different than before....could it be that the turbo is going and not the engine?....i hope this is the case.....if so...how can i check if the coolant seals(in engine) are still good..would a compression test give me the results?....also how can i tell if the turbo coolant seals are going?......(stock turbos are water cooled right?)

thanks

torean

 

ok....after letting my car idle while i wrote the first post.......i went to check the engine temp and it was 3/4 way up......someone told me before that a blown turbo would cause that problem........anyone?

 

turbos are oil cooled, a blown coolant seal / water jacket leak, will cause fooding when shut off, start up after shuting down will be tough nearly impossible if cases are bad, water/coolant in the oil is a first tale, oil foamy...also loss of water in the system..and it will run poorley loss of ower, there is a temp fix for this search Block weld. or goto RotaryResurection for this, i just fixed a 1988 GTU with a cracked water jacket works awesome!

 

pressure check your cooling system and see if you can find out where the coolant is going, i would be willing to bet it is winding up in the combustion chamber and what is causing your flooding problem and why it is burning the coolant in the exhaust.

sorry to be the bearer of bad new but it's the nature of the rotary beast...


just gotta be extensive with your testing, if you look hard enough i'm sure you will find the cause.

 

it happened again tonight.....oil doesnt look like it has any coolant in it at all....just thinned down alot

 

not in the crankcase... get a cooling system pressure checker on it and pump it to 13psi and let the engine sit for about 10-15 minutes while watching the pressure on the tester, remove both leading plugs and pull the EGI fuse and crank the engine while watching the leading plug holes, if you are getting coolant blown out of any of the leading holes then it is likely there is a blown coolant seal in that housing.

 

oil plus coolant makes a very easy to spot mocha frappuchino color in the oil reserve.
you may just have leaky oil injectors too. i thought i had a coolant leak too, then i realized that none of it was getting inthe exhaust. i have a pinhole leak near the pump housing.
however, losing coolant over a period of days is a bad bad sign. is your overflow tank usually full?

 

1) let car cool. Fill with coolant as much as it'll take. Leave cap off coolant. Remove EGI fuses to prevent engine from starting. Crank engine over, see if coolant gets pushed out. Pressure in system = combustion gases entering cooling system.

2) Let car sit overnight, full of coolant. THe next day, remove your EGI fuse. Crank the car for about 1 second, about 6 rotations. Remove all your plugs and check for water deposited on them. ANy water = coolant pooled in engine combustion chamber.

 

Kevin's method probably works better than mine, and most people probably don't carry a cooling system pressure tester so i would take his advice.

 

thanks....ok....when the engine running the water level at the thermostat housing usually oscillates, i thought it was just the water pump messin with it...ok..i'll try the procedure tomorrow...from the looks of it....its time for a rebuild.....hmm.....streetport maybe?......too bad the budget is only 1000

 

another thing....could the coolant seal go without leaking coolant into the oil pan?

 

Yes, coolant and oil normally do not mix because of coolant seals. They can, but the inner is the one that fails most offten...the boundary betwen combustion and coolant. The outer is the boundary between coolant and oil/air.

The reason you perform my test when cold and when not running, is to eliminate all sources of pressure and turbulence in the system EXCEPT air being forced in from the combustion chamber. Remember that the cooling system operates between 0 and 13psi, whereas the combustion chamber produces pressures between 80 and 1000psi. You're looking for some of that higher pressure being pushed into the cooling system when cranking over. There is no heat in the coolant so expansion can be ruled out, and the waterpump is barely spinning so pumping pressure can be eliminated as well. IF you have any coolant forced out there is only one reason.

 

yup.....coolant seals are done...what are the chances that the irons are toast?...i mean how else would the coolant seals go right?

 

You won't know until disassembly, until than It's all speculation.

 

IT's about 75/25 that you will have a cracked iron most of the time.

 

you could also remove the belts that drive the water pump, if there is any water disturbance with the engine running then it means air is being forced into the engine from the inner seals. after a short period though there will be water disturbance as the water temp starts to increase, you should also not run the engine for more than a few minutes without the water pump engaged.



where do the irons normally crack Kevin? i couldn't see anything on my irons but i didn't hear anything about where they normally crack so i can't be sure now that it is all back together.

 

The water seal groove wall cracks and falls into the water jacket, this usually happens in the 1/4 of the engine that you would call the power "stroke" from 3 until 6 0clock, which is where the most heat and stress is present in the engine.

See www.rotaryresurrection.com ---> tech ---> internal engine damage