I need some serious help here…I’m not extremely familiar with this engine and I’m not rich by any measure to throw money blindly at a problem…but I need it fixed asap
So one day I get to my friend’s house for parts. When I was driving there I started smelling burning coolant and saw my temp was almost maxed. I got the car to his house and popped the hood.
My coolant resevoir was boiling like a kettle, had a small oil leak from the overheat, but man was the car hot/smokin coolant. Also noticed that my radiatior fan was indefinitely not working
We put some more oil in the car, filled the rad with water (had no coolant at the time, started her up and she was ok for about 3/4 of the way back from pickering to ajax…then the temp shot up again.:C
Noticed also odd behavior from this issue,
-my idle was no longer below 1000rpm from ignition: it’d go to about 2000 and THEN drop
-when I drove home and it’d get hot, all ofa sudden I’d see it drop down 2-3 ticks on my temp, then go up again
-I drove it a small distance after left on a cold night, things were fine and then the temp increase wasn’t gradual at all. it was like BAM half way suddenly
-now the car is having a hard time going thru it’s ignition, which I never had an issue with
PLEASE I beg of help from anyone relatively close to Ajax (I can’t take the car for a great distance)
It sounds like your head got warped with the overheat unfortunately.
Where did this oil leak spring from?
Have you changed that thermostat at all? How about the water pump? And you said the fan didn’t go on? I’ve seen a few SRs running without Fans on hot days, so I’m not so sure if it’s that.
Whatever you just said here is even more reason for me to believe the head is warped. Oil won’t always mix with the coolant if your head gasket is blown. It’s just extremely likely. Oil won’t always mix with coolant if your head is warped, it’s just extremely likely.
I didn’t think the oil would be leaking from the block. Which manifold? Exhaust or Intake? Any pics of the whole thing?
Can you elaborate? This thread turned up in my search for resolve of a similar overheating problem with my rwd SR20DET.
My coolant is boiling but not into my overflow tank. I can hear it at the back of the head and I have no leaks. It used to boil like this when I’d romp on it on the way home and quickly shut it down, but now that i’ve got an overheating problem I hear it boiling in the same area no matter how long I let it cool down. Just now after coming home I let it idle in the driveway for 5 minutes with the heat on full blast, and even though the temp gauge had settled to a bit below what would be considered normal, I still heard the boiling when I turned off the key.
The motor’s been running perfect for almost 4 years and changing the thermostat hasn’t helped. I want to know more about what helped you, since I’m confident my cooling system is bled properly. I haven’t completely eliminated the head gasket but I’ve been in that boat before and the exhaust doesn’t smell sweet nor do I have bubbles in the coolant.
About a year ago I upgraded my turbo to a GT2871R and instead of buying new oil/coolant flex lines for it, I finagled with the stock hard lines until they fit. That means I still have the original small rubber coolant hose behind the head that joins the “out” hard line from the turbo to another hard line that I assume runs to the throttle body.
Is that ~6" long, thin diameter rubber hose the one you replaced? How were you able to determine it was rotten? seems to me a rotten line would burst instead of merely impeding flow… but I guess stranger things have happened.
By chance I noticed my radiator cap was bad. I was poking around the engine bay this morning and squeezed the upper radiator hose and I heard coolant rushing to the overflow tank. It was leaking past the cap seal pretty easily. I inspected it and sure enough the rubber had deteriorated a bit and formed a crack.
Curiously, it wasn’t overflowing into my tank while driving, but it would appear that it was venting just enough pressure to drop the coolant boiling temp threshold and allow the car to overheat. With the new cap it seems happy, and I no longer hear that boiling sound when I shut down the car.
I haven’t yet put the car through as long a test as possible, so in the event that I’m being overly optimistic I’d still like to know what you found when you figured out your coolant line had rotted.
Yeah, it turned out, the engine was totally fine whew
No warp, no blown gasket, nothing.
However I had a turbo coolant hose that was rotted, and some electrical that got cooked, leading to no working radiator fan.
So I’m getting that repaired, with oil change, battery box for the hatch (no more battery bouncin around), hatch and it’s wiring all fixed, relay with thermal sensor for the rad fan installed, and for schitz n gigglez I’m trying to install the kouki cluster (digital odometer & redline max @ 9K rpm)…now I’m trying to get the parts asap for it…
