Hey guys so I was checking out an FD today for my friend. He's thinking becoming a rotard like us!!!

Anyway, everything looked pretty good, but I'm unsure of a few things:

1. Black goo in coolant overflow tank - Usually a sign of coolant seal issues as far as I know, but I did do the champagne test and it didn't seem to have any issues. The car has popped 2 motors before this one however so if they didn't clean it out that could be a possibility. I'll describe what I saw and you can decide.

2. Champagne test - So the engine was cold, I started it and took off the coolant cap. Coolant was kind of flowing out slowly, car was tilted slightly forward maybe 3 degrees or so. I did see some occasional bubbles. I also saw some super tiny bubbles at the beginning, but then it stopped. We let it get warm and the coolant was just still kind of slightly overflowing at a slow steady pace, i was catching it with a rag and it wasn't too much. No bubbles at this point either.

I didn't let it warm up to 80C+ though because I didn't wanna make more of a mess in the engine bay.

3. Temps were steady at the usual 88 after a few 1,2,3 pulls, so that seems good to me as well.

Let me know what you guys think. We're trying to close the deal pretty soon but we wanna make sure there's no imminent rebuild.

 

no champagne test experts?

 

When you took the cap off and started the car did coolant kinda "burst" up out of the water pump neck? If so, I would be worried. Really a much better way to test the health of the seals is go rent a coolant system pressure tester from the local auto parts store and use it. The goo really is not that abnormal. I had it in my tank with perfectly healthy seals. Though I did later remove the tank and clean it out.

 

Have the guy take it to a rotary shop to get it checked out by a professional.

http://www.ricksrotary.com/