DanHS

I'm driving home from class yesterday, been on the road for about 5 minutes and I catch a whif of an odd burning smell, smells like coolant. I look at the temp guage and it's at about 250 or so and climbing. I pulled over a couple minutes later as I could nearly watch the guage rising up to the red zone. I shut it down and looked underneath to see coolant dripping all over under the rad. I opened the hood but I couldn't find any leak, though there was still a little dripping from the bottom of the rad, and there was coolant on the fan. So maybe it's leaking from the bottom of the rad, a split seam or something? I limped the car to a store, dumped a ton of water into it, and drove home that way, with the temp hanging around 230. Today when I checked it, it hadn't all leaked out. How could it dump everything in a few minutes yesterday, and nothing last night? I added some coolant, a little overfilled, and drove it the 10 minutes to work. It was hanging around 200, usually it stays cold all the time.

Also, when I opened the radiator cap, It was full of lime, everywhere, even floating in the water. I don't remeber this, I'm sure in 2+ years of owning the car I've opened the rad several times. I've only ever added coolant to it, as it was always clean and green. This looks like years of having hard water put in it. Now I'm wondering if the rest of the coolant system is stuffed full of lime. I've already determined I'm tossing the rad, most likely for a 3 row Modine unit, getting a new fan since the original is cracking, and replacing the hoses with the silicon Goodyear ones. Maybe replace the water pump with a higher flow unit too. Now I'm wondering will the engine be stuffed with lime too? Since the engine is hot and the radiator cool, the lime would concievebly be dissolved in the hot water, and precipitate out in the water that cools in the rad, forming chalky deposits in the rad. I guess I'll have to pull it all apart and inspect everything to see for sure. Any suggestions?

DanHS

bump, any ideas?

lookinforastang

sounds about time for a flush