I just bought this car and had done minor repairs to it (new battery, plugs, cap and rotor, pcv valve). The car was running fine when i bought it but after the rapairs it started having problems. When we had it running after the repairs it would run for 2-3 minutes stutter and seem to save its self but after another minute or so it would die. After this it wouldnt start again. Heres the scary part...when i got the car the coolant in the resevoir was a little low but nothing major...when we were running it last we noticed a liquid sputtering out of the exhaust. We just checked the resevoir and it was bone dry and the rad was about 3/4 full. Theres no liquid under the car so were thinking that the fluid must be running through the engine and out of the car. The car is also getting a code 15 (engine coolant sensor). We were told the car had ported and polished heads and im thinking that not necessarily there but somewhere i have rad fluid running into my engine. Does anyone have any advice or any other things to check.

 

does it smoke at all? if its blowing white smoke out the heads cracked and the head gasket is blown. check the oil and make sure it doesnt look like a vanilla milkshake, and if it does same thing as above,or i guess the block could even be cracked somewhere. hope this helps

 

First thing you'll have to do is a Compression Check. Even though theres liquid coming out of your tailpipes, chances are its the Catalytic Converter converting your waste gases to water. While your driving and the car is warmed up and if you happen to see white smoke coming out of your exhaust, you've got a bad head gasket. To do a compression check you will need to remove all spark plugs at once. Install a compression gauge to each cylinder. With your foot on the gas pedal all the way down(Throttle blades have to be OPEN)crank it(4 revolutions)(Before you do this disconnect the fuel pump relay or distributor connector,so you wont flood the engine with fuel) Do this to each cylinder and write down the reading(PSI) Each cylinder shouldnt differ 10% of each other. 120-150 psi means you have a good cylinder, anything below 100psi, means cylinder is dead. What you can also do is check your spark plugs. If there is a WHITE coating(Dont mistake it for tan)that can also be a way of showing if your burning coolant(It can also let you know if your running lean)If i were you id replace the Coolant temp sensor which is located in front of your intake manifold if TPI. What the Coolant temp. sensor does is Measure the temp of your engine. Thus if its cold it will tell the comp. to throw more gas, If its hot its telling it to lighten up on gas. Good luck.

 

tiny bit of white smoke out of exhaust but nothing too major. dont have the ability to check oil easily at the moment will do in the near future. The issue with my cat changing my waste gasses to fluid is a valid one but if the coolant isnt coming out of the back of my car where is it going?

 

Oil is definitely the first thing to check. If it looks like a chocolate shake then you have problems like a bad intake gasket or possible blown head gasket. If it looks like regular oil then go on to a compression check just to be sure the head gaskets are good. When you pull the plugs to check the compression look and see if they are wet. If so then the head gasket on that side is shot and the cylinder is taking on coolant. I wouldn't worry about cracked heads, these engines aren't bad about that, but if they didn't torque the heads down properly when they P&P'd them then a head gasket is very likely.

If the guy did his own port and polish, it's also possible that he took too much material out and made a coolant channel wall thin enough to crack and leak. If this turns out to be the case file a lawsuit against him for selling you a lemon, and settle out of court for a new set of AFR 190's.

 

i know for a fact that he didnt do it himself but if the heads were over ported could i take anyone to court? Anyways most likely on thursday ill get the car up on a jack and check my oil. I'm just worried that this job is going to take me forever. Ive certainly never done anything like this before and my buddy is good with cars but even he doesnt have too much experience with stripping apart the top half of the block. See none of those seem like too major jobs its just how deep i might end up having to go. The only good thing i could see coming out of this is if it was over ported its an excuse to get some nice heads

(so much for the battery issue though eh GreatJ btw what exactly are afr 190's )

 

If you are burning coolant you should be able to smell it? It will have a bittersweet smell. Put a few drops of coolant on the exhaust manifold and you will get the smell. Were the stock heads ported? There is not alot there to play with if you don't know what you are doing. I know you said he had someone do the port work. I would recheck the coolant in a day or to and see if it has gone back down. Refill it and get again in a couple of days. Also make sure you clean the TB and the MAF sensor if it has one. Make sure not to touch the wires in the MAF tho. Then go thru and check for loose wires and vac lines.
just my .02 hope it helps.

 

yay the car works again. All it needed was a new engine coolent sensor. Still not completly sure if its leaking engine coolant but i guess well have to see that over time.

 

yOUR WELCOME

 

yeah it was a code 15 so it was reading cold and dumping enough fuel into my car to flood the thing while it was freaking running. I picked up my new sensor though the thing was like 15 bucks after taxes and the thing runs amazing. I got up to doing around 100 km/h on my little street . I also topped off my coolant so well see if it dissapears on me again seemed to be okay after running though.