theorie

iTrader: (31)

Sooooo I just flew down to Florida yesterday. Was happy to see my car after being in NYC for the past 3 months. Drove it around last night, ran great. Currently have no boost controller / pills installed so the turbos are only making 7psi (rich-man's no seq setup)

Well last night it ran great, no smoke, no problems. This morning I start it up and it sounds like its flooded. I start it and give it gas to hold it at 3000rpm...LOTS of smoke out of the tail pipe. After 20 seconds or so I start seeing smoke from under the hood (passenger's side).

I popped the hood and theres coolant splashed up onto the firewall on the passenger's side. Under the car theres a puddle of coolant.

I'm guessing the rear turbo blew it's water seal?

This sucks considering that I just rebuilt the turbos 1500 miles ago. Ported the wastegate & ceramic coated the exhaust side housings... Freshly rebuilt & broken-in motor.

My friend's shop just got their dyno installed this morning, and my Blitz Dual-SBC Spec R boost controller came, so today we were going to tune it for 15lbs. So much for that...

DaveW

Turbo coolant hose or coolant hardpipe leak. I've never heard of a turbo water seal...

Dave

theorie

iTrader: (31)

what i mean by turbo water seal is...i was thinking that it's leaking from inside the CRHA...since the coolant flows though it.

if it was just one of the hoses/hardpipes, why would it be smoking out the exhaust?

also, the car is unable to idle.

DaveW

Coolant in the engine bay, and poor idle, combined with smoke out the exhaust doesn't sound good. Sounds like (but I hope it is not) a severely blown coolant seal inside the engine. If it were just a turbo problem, that shouldn't affect the idle, unless some ignition stuff got wet. Coolant from a turbo internal leak (IMO) would have a hard time getting to the engine thru the intake unless you were at more throttle.

Dave

theorie

iTrader: (31)

the motor was just rebuilt recently and i ran it though the proper break in process. i definitely hope it's not an engine coolant seal.

my turbos are pretty ghetto though. the front CRHA is the original one off of my car (30k miles), the rear CRHA is "rebuilt" and off of a set that hat 60k miles on it. 2 of the 3 exhaust side housings are off of my original set, and one of them is off of the extra set.

the motor was professionally rebuilt, the turbos are frankenstein "rebuilds". i would imagine its the turbos before the motor.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

well, anyway...i'm gonna pull the turbos this afternoon. i'll update when i figure it out.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

****, double post

DaveW

I hope it's not also, but coolant seals can go at any time, especially if there was corrosion pitting in the coolant seal grooves, or a thinned rail where they seat caused by corrosion.

Good luck!

Dave

CarbonR1

iTrader: (2)

I've never seen a turbo CHRA with a water seal because the water passage is completely separated from the oil passage. I doubt it's a turbo water seal.

Six Rotors

iTrader: (17)

Passenger side is where the heater hoses enter and exit thte heater thro the firewall.One of those maybe leaking.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

i figured it out...

i had disconnected the throttle body AWS system....so i put caps on the inlet/outlet.

the outlet for that (on top of the rear cover, near the fuel reg.) popped off. dont know why it would be smoking out the exhaust (but the car has been sitting for a couple of weeks so maybe thats why.

im going to get a cap right now to see if that fixes the prob. prob just need to top off teh collant

fingers crossed

theorie

iTrader: (31)

ok...so i capped the nipple that had come off and topped off the coolant.

car started right up with no smoke and after warming up it idled fine.

drove the car about 4 miles or so and the temp stayed right around 86 - 91...so pretty normal.

then i come to a light and the car starts idling kind of funny. i noticed a puff of white smoke out the tail pipe and the temp started to shoot up. it hit 114 before i was able to get off the road and shut it off.

it looks like the nipple that i capped is still leaking somehow (maybe the cap melted?) and also i noticed another leak on the lower radiator hose (not the main hose, but the smaller hose that attaches right above it on the water pump housing).

also, i noticed a pretty good amount of coolant dripping out onto the ground and pooling.

filled the coolant drove the car back home. temps never reached above 86...stopped twice along the way and it barely needed any coolant at all.

at present there are only the two small leaks that i know of. i'm going to tear the engine bay down tonight to see what else i can find.

so...its sounding more and more like an engine seal. good thing i have a warranty on the rebuild

if so, what a bummer. i've had this car for over 1 year now and i've only been able to drive it for less than 3000 miles.

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

sorry to hear about your problems man

For this exact reason I *never* use caps on the coolant nipples. When we delete the coolant through the throttle body (different from AWS), we rotate a new stock hose 90 degrees clockwise from the regular orientation and run it forward to the rear of the water pump housing. Boom, done.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

yeah, i'm going going to do that from now on. should have done it in the first place

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

I'm curious, what kind of a warranty on the rebuild? I know that we wouldnt cover this case under warranty, as it's related to an install error, and no fault of the builder.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

i had it rebuilt by rotary resurrection

from his website:

"Engine will not lose coolant INTERNALLY as a result of a coolant seal leak. Engines overheated by the customer may not qualify for warranty coverage."

the car never overheated though, it just got hot. the car was smoking out the tail pipe before it ever had a problem getting hot (or leaking coolant). it didn't die and the overheat light never came on. i don't see how that is case to void the warranty, when it was smoking out the exhaust before the car ever began to get hot.

NinjaGUYdan

Sounds like those plugs may have popped, you lost coolant, filled it back up and created an air bubble in the coolant system, now your facing seal problems. Start the car and pop the radiator cap and see if it is bubbling right away or at all, that will let you know if exhaust is getting into the coolant system via a broken coolant seal. Tada!

theorie

iTrader: (31)

ok, you guys are not understanding...

the car never over heated! it just wants to.

i drove the car sunday night and it was fine all night. temps never got above 86.

the next morning, (as i wrote in my first post) i start the car and it puffs lots of white smoke and runs really shitty. while i was diagnosing what might be the problem, i found that a rubber nipple popped off the one of the coolant lines (the one that was no longer needed with the throttle delete). i actually found the cap underneath the car in the puddle of coolant and re-capped the nipple (with a better hose clamp this time).

are you trying to tell me that a brand new water seal failed because the car lost a little coolant (maybe a 1/4 gallon) while sitting in the driveway and the temps never passed 110? haha right...

this has nothing to do with "install error" as rich stated. i feel bad for anyone who needs to call in warranty work with your company! lol

my neighbors bone stock FD with 86,000 original miles has overheated like 7 times (really bad - steam everywhere, shooting boiling water out the radiator cap)...his car still runs great and the stock coolant seals are still holding up fine.

at this point i'm fairly positive that the car definitely has a bad coolant seal. i don't blame the builder because i know he does great work, but hey - every now and then you get a bad part from the factory, who knows? i'm still waiting to hear back from the builder so i don't know if he will fix it under warranty or not. i know kevin is a great guy so im sure he wont have a problem helping to resolve this issue.

anyway, the car has been eating coolant for some time now, i just thought that since it was a fresh install the system has been clearing out the bubbles...apparently its been burning off in the motor.

the main thing is, the car never overheated - it got hotter than usual so i shut it off immediately each time. the car is obviously burning coolant and at this point we're pretty positive that its a coolant seal.

zack4173

iTrader: (3)

Correct me if Im wrong but isnt that what everyone was telling you all along. That you coolant seal was bad. So I think they were listening just fine.

theorie

iTrader: (31)

that was in response to the guys who were saying that the coolant seal failure was somehow related to "install error" and might not be covered by warranty

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

I was misunderstanding the chronological order in which all this happened.....I thought you made a mistake and used improper parts (coolant caps), which led to a leak and an overheating event. In this case, it's absolutely install error and I wouldn't hesitate to void the warranty. For this reason our warranty doesn't cover failures due to unqualified personnel 'working on' the car. Not saying this is the case here, but I've seen some pretty crazy stuff

Of course, now that you've clarified the situation and claim the car never overheated, that's a different story. Seems like you're doing the right thing, I'm sure you and Kevin will work it out

theorie

iTrader: (31)

haha yeah rich. no worries man. i was a little pissed / scatterbrained yesterday while positing. sorry if i came off as a dick on that last one.

my friend's shop just got their dyno, so we were planning on tuning the car for boost this week. now we'll be pulling the motor and stripping it to the short block.

pretty disappointing that i've owned this car for a year and it's been off the road almost the whole time. you would think that a near-stock car with 29k original miles would be a safe car to buy, however its been nothing but (major) problems since i bought it.

brought the car over to the shop last night. hopefully i'll be able to drive this thing by summer. at this rate...who knows. lol

JStrib

iTrader: (6)

Completely understood. I'm coming up on a year with mine as well and I've driven it for 3 months. It feels more like I borrowed a friends car than actually owned one...



damn overheating...(my case)

RotaryResurrection

iTrader: (8)

I've cleared theorie to return the engine for me to check it out using a coolant system pressure test tool. If it holds pressure for a while then I will consider it still good, if pressure leaks down then I will tear it down and investigate. I really, really doubt it is an internal issue. It would be the first legitimate coolant seal failure I've had in YEARS.

For those curious, here are pics of his engine teardown/assembly. http://www.rotaryresurrection.com/builds/frascone/

I'll post a few here just for the hell of it.

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

Very nice lookin' motor kev