Thread: What Happened?

I was driving down the road yesterday when I see some smoke coming from my grilles, so I pull over and shut the car off. The radiator wasn't shot, so I just let everything cool down and bring it the other 1/2 mile home.
Afterward I open up the radiator and look at the antifreeze, antifreeze level is normal but there is MOUNDS of brown gunk and slime all over the place. I'm assuming a radiator flush will solve the problem, but just curious as to how this could've happened?
EDIT: I also heard an odd clicking noise when I first started the engine that day, but everything ran fine and it went away after I drove it a bit, haven't heard it since, not sure if that means anything.

Is it oil mixing with it? Did you check your engine oil and see if it has changed color or has gone up some?

na, the recall is just for weeping valve covers, which just about every car does as they age.

brown gunk and slime sounds like dex-sludge. You need to figure out where it's coming from, it really does sound like a blown radiator.

if it was a blown radiator, it would have had to have been REALLY bad with sludge, so it's probably coming from somewhere else. The question is where, though.

Edit, I was just rereading, the sludge was just inside of the radiator? I was thinking it was outside. oops.

sludge inside of the radiator could be a couple of things. It could be dex-sludge, which indicates a problem with your cooling system, or it could simply be residue from GM's stop leak tabs, which were added as part of a recall a while back.

If it is dex-sludge, it means you're getting corrosion inside of your cooling system. This can happen if you add the wrong coolant to a Dex system, or if there's air in the system, either from running low or from a leak.

If you're smelling oil burning off, it's probably coming from the valve covers. The recall says that that oil can burn high enough to catch the spark plug wire channel on fire, so they're removing the channel. Nice fix, isn't it?