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Low Coolant came on

Pontiac Racer

Pontiac Racer

New member
i went driving today but when i started my car my low coolant light came on. the last time it came on was when it was -35 degrees outside. last night probably didn't even hit 20 degrees. it was pretty warm for being winter. anyway there is no way it froze. so i went driving and after about 5-7 minutes, the light turned off. then a few minutes after that turned back on and then off right away. then back on and stayed on. i just checked the radiator to see if the coolant was actually low and this is what i found...

is the sludge on the sides normal? the cap didn't have much on it but it did have some. and how far up should the coolant be? at the very tippy top or just a bit down from it? i just don't want it to turn out to be a head gasket issue
 


your sensor is dirty or failing. its on the pass side of the rad. take the pass side head light out and you got a good view of it. you can also unplug it and the light wont come on any more.
 
it looks like 2 or 3 inches low to me.

ever done the lim gaskets? maybe the intake is leaking? got coolant in the lim bolt valleys?
 
no its well past 3 inches. the radiator neck itself is maybe 3 inches long it sits well below that. are you talking about the bolts that have a long stem coming off of them. like in the corner. well i guess none of that matters cause this is what i found



well there it is. the orange stain coming from the intake manifold. *face palms*
 
Wipe the sludge out. Fill it up with coolant. And the reservoir. Watch it. Then when you get time flush she dex cool out of there and put green in. Then watch some more to see if you need to do a gasket.


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no, these bolts that are holding the lower intake on in this pic. your n/a but have the same bolts and little wells they live in.

limjob1.jpg
 
is the dex cool crap or something? why green. I'm not gonna be able to flush it for a while and the more coolant thats getting sucked in the engine the worse it is for the engine i can imagine. I'm gonna take it down to a shop and get it inspected to actually see whats wrong and go from there. theres no way in doing this by myself cause I'm bound to mess something up. otherwise i would
 
its easy to do a lim job. your n/a engine, the upper intake fails and causes the eating of the coolant, the lower plastic gaskets fail also.

once the fuel rail and wire harness is off its like 20 bolts to get to here. then you put the new gaskets in and put it all back together.

limjob3.jpg


if you do this mod, your n/a engine upper intake can never leak on you again. http://www.grandprixforums.net/threads/46931-How-to-Mod-a-LIM

this thread shows the failure parts in the upper intake. http://www.grandprixforums.net/threads/60667-97-03-NA-L36-UIM-Failure?highlight=failure
 
its really not as complicated as you make it seem, have a little confidence, read the articles, make sure you have all the tools, give yourself enough time to get it done and dive in. if you run into trouble, come here and ask more questions. a shop will probably charge you way more then they should to do this job.

and from personal experience, the coolant leak will just get worse to the point that you are leaking like a gallon a week until you fix it, and it wasn't that bad for the engine because in my case it wasn't really getting into the firing chamber.
 
Haha, you think the sludge in the rad neck is bad, wait until you see what the coolant ports in the heads look like when you do the lim gaskets. The guy that invented Dexcool should be shot, and buried in an unmarked grave.
 


99GT2dr said:
Haha, you think the sludge in the rad neck is bad, wait until you see what the coolant ports in the heads look like when you do the lim gaskets. The guy that invented Dexcool should be shot, and buried in an unmarked grave.
Click to expand...

Guy, it's been said over and over again, dexcool wasn't the real issue. It was the ****ty plastic LIM gaskets hence why the aluminum ones were made. If you replace the gaskets with another set of plastics and use that green crap, the gaskets will fail again because, like I said earlier, the plastic design is ****. Also the egr stove pipe burns a hole, sometimes 2 holes, in the plenum causing coolant to leak into the LIM and cylinders. The fix for that is to use the updated GM UIM with the metal sleeve built in to prevent melting from the egr stove pipe. You can also use the Dorman kit that replaces the OE egr pipe and it's skinnier. You could block the ports like scotty said as well or upgrade to the aluminum UIM.
 
its dex coolant that makes the sludge tho, when its in contact with air you get all the boogers. 1/2 my ports in my heads to lim were 1/2 blocked off with crap.
 
Dex cool also sludges up tahoes and pickups radiators without any gasket issues. It's actually the contact with air in the overflow bottle that starts the process and then it's sucks in and circulated in the engine. More current designs have the overflow bottle pressurized as well.


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Jerseydoggs said:
its dex coolant that makes the sludge tho, when its in contact with air you get all the boogers. 1/2 my ports in my heads to lim were 1/2 blocked off with crap.
Click to expand...

that's one of the biggest problems. Alot of people think they bleed their cars properly and they don't so that's on them
 


Nothing wrong with dexcool, it needs to be changed/flushed as often as green.
Coolant system needs to be properly maintained and looked after...people with problems made their own problems or bought someones elses problems.
 
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