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What the hell? Blew the cap off the thermostat housing on i5/i84 merge, no place to pull over, temp maxed in about 5 seconds from normal to max, no shoulder til 33rd street off ramp. How tough are the head gaskets on the 4.0?
If it will crank and run, you may have got lucky. The quick response by the gauge is normal for a standard set up. They don't give a lot of warning, lots of us go to the real gauge for water and oil readings.
If you still had water in the radiator, some circulation may have saved the day. Replace with aluminum and a new crossover plastic pipe with new gaskets and see what you have.
Don;t get too concerned if you get a knock sensor code, when they get wet, the ground gets disturbed, a quick clean up of the bottom takes care of most of that problem, most of the time.
Finding out what caused the top to blow off would be my concern, the one hose does look to have had pressure getting ready to blow it apart.
Let us know what you find out and if we can help.
After looking at the picture a little closer, that looks a bit like oil slug in the picture of the top, so a head gasket may have already happened and was in fact the cause of your problem.
crap, i bet you are right..... Anytime i see degraded plastics in cooling systems my first thought is leaking combustion gasses of some level. i slowly added fresh water and limped 15 miles home adding a gallon every 5 miles with the cap wedged on and a bundle of rags to hold it, didn't overheat at higher rate than i anticipated, but i'm assuming there may be a prior head gasket leak at 130k miles anyway. I guess the main way to check is to test for combustion gases? i do have a pressure test rig that i've never used but assume that with that much hosing i'd never be able to accurately figure anything out from a pressure test. No water in the oil at all prior to this, but yeah, that residue had me thinking WTF. I was hoping the prior owner had used some sort of stop leak or something.
Did you see an oily cream in the coolant fluid in the expansion tank?
I just completed an overhaul of my front engine coolant system, so I can see why you’re frustrated. Firstly, the plastic coolant tower is probably OEM from the factory so way past it’s sell by date. Probably good luck you were close to home at the time of failure.
Two, the ballooned hose to the coolant tower shows age and/or excess pressure. Can’t be sure which.
Next step is to order the Aluminium coolant tower (cheap part), check all hoses, dry all the spilled coolant, (otherwise you’ll get a Restricted Performance” warning as coolant interferes with the knock sensors), then do a drain, chemical flush and fill.
Hopefully the head gasket is fine in such a limited overheated time window. But do the above and let’s see.
The cooling tower is not exactly plastic, it’s more of a pressed fiber material, sort of a resin soaked cardboard type arrangement. I noticed when I carved the treaded portion out of the cap.
My tower looked fine until I removed the radiator bypass hose, when I could see that the material was turning brown underneath where the clamps had been. Both your tower and water outlet pipe have gone the same colour.
IMO biodegradable stuff has no place in critical parts of a coolling system where there are alternatives
At least we don't have sh*tty plastic headlamps...
Last edited by michaelh; 06-29-2020 at 05:44 PM.
Reason: clarify
Hi Stephjac, had a similar issue with mine when the thermostat stuck. I would replace the housing and thermostat then see how it runs. Changing the head gaskets is not such an easy job. There is a lot to dismantle and you will need a set of timing tools, new stretch head bolts and all the gaskets, coolant and time.
Tony
My first impression was that you will need to flush your entire coolant system. It looks like the coolant in the car was mixed with the wrong type and due to a chemical reaction it turned to sludge and may have clogged your system causing it to over heat. Be sure to flush the entire system before driving.
After a drain, chemical flush, I recommend you use distilled/battery water for last flush (you’ll need at least 5L (1.5 gallon).
Then go for an OAT M97B44-D Spec Coolant. Comes in all funny colours from different brands but go for the premixed not concentrate. Otherwise you’ll need to mix the concentrate with yet more battery water. Never use tap water.
You’ll get maybe 3 years from this and then you can get away with just a drain and fill.
The correct coolant to prevent failure of cooling system components is DexCool. Do not mix the green coolant with the orange coolant or it will gel and cause overheating and corrosion.
That’s what I’d thought, I’ve got 3 aluminum block v8 cars and just need to consolidate, they’re all running what the previous owners put in them, so I’m dealing with green in the rover and jag, blue in the Bmw , and orange in my 95 suburban.
So I filled it up, and started the car, engine sounds okay, no water in the oil, no oil in the water, no steam out the tail pipe. So that’s good news, I watched the water flow through and warmed it up and took a few sniffs, no exhaust smell in the water. Also, the plastic thermostat towers are actually fiberglass if anybody is wondering, and the slime was only present in the tower and transfer pipe, so it appears it’s the resin breaking down, not sure if it’s age/heat , or if green antifreeze is a contributor to the chemical breakdown.
So, new transfer pipe came with new cooler sensor, so car actually runs a little better. Since I broke the vanity covers trying to pry out the stuck middle pins, it’s actually drying out, and I can hear what the valve train is doing when hot. Still waiting on some parts, but it’s moving again.
06-29-2020, 09:23 AM
