Okay, here's my story. I was driving in stop and go traffic, and the day is hot. While I was at a stop, my current water temp was around 95 degrees celsius, and all of a sudden the coolant buzzer went off, and I pull over to the side. I turn off my motor as soon as I pull over, and I pop my hood. Nothing seemed unusual, so I start her up, and she runs fine. I drive her home, about a 10 minute drive from where I pulled over. BTW I was taking it very easy, since that coolant buzzer scared the crap out of me.

I park the car in the garage, and I leave the car alone for about 30 minutes. My wife screams out my name and tells me my mom says the car is making weird noises. I go and see what's the problem and I hear bubbling. The water and coolant were literaly boiling in the AST, and hoses. I think even the reservior tank was boiling. I pour water in ther reservior and the bubbling simmered down. I then rigged my room fan in front of the bumper, turned on the car and let it really cool down. After it cooled down, I left the car alone for 2 days.

I checked out the car today, and the moment I opened my radiator cap, I see brown mud looking sludge. I then open the AST and see brown liquid, and a few clumps of brown stuff that looked like dirt. I think to myself, "but this is a closed pressurized system, what could it be?" I call my cousin and he tells me that it's oil in the coolant, so I'm thinking my coolant seal is done for. Basically a blown motor or no? The car runs fine and idles fine. My idle is also perfect.

SO what I'm doing right now, is I drained the system. Ran 2 gallons of distilled water through, closed the drain and filled up with Prestone Super Cleaner, and Distelled water. The instructions say run for about 3 to 6 hours. Basically I'll drive her around tomorrow, and drain that night, and fill her up. What are your opinions and suggestions on what I should do right now? Is she blown? Who else has experienced this?

 

 

Is there any white smoke when you start the car up? Also did you check the oil level in the car? That doesn't look like oil to me. I live in Tracy, so if you need any help with it let me know.

 

No white smoke, YET I hope not. She starts up easy too. I'll check on the oil level tomorrow. I'm happy to know there is another FD owner in the area!

 

Doesn't look like oil to me, either. Just looks like really old/bad coolant.

 

Just looks like rust to me, too. Be careful with the super-flush - if there is bad corrosion, it can open up leaks. Plus, if you drive around w/o antifreeze, your coolant will boil at a lower temperature (see the attached chart), and you could lose your coolant and overheat, and overheating could ruin your coolant seals and engine.

When you refill after completing the flush, use 50/50 distilled water and green (ethylene-glycol) antifreeze.

While you are going through this, you should do a pressure test to make sure your coolant caps are OK. A bad AST cap (or dirt under the seals) could have caused all of this in the first place by not keeping the coolant sufficiently pressurized.

 

Thanks guys. I did notice my AST cap had some crap on the seal and behind the seal where the springs for the cap was all muddy looking.