Experienced sudden loss of coolant because of a broken heater valve.

Towed the car to my mechanic Nilsson's in LA, and they replaced the heater valve, thermostat, coolant, and temp sensor for the gauge.

Since the change today, my car runs roughly when I start it and as it idles. During acceleration, there is a whooshing/hissing sound which goes away during cruising. And occassional white smoke comes out from the exhaust during idle although this problem seems to be diminishing.

Hope I have not done any permanent damage on my 240,000 car.

Any ideas?

You would not be the first customer I have seen that managed to blow his head gasket doing exactly what you did. Sometimes it does not blow it immediately it just seriously weakens it and then it blows a short time down the road. You might want to consider having a block test and/or a cylinder leak down done on it and it may work better if you do a leak down on it while it is cold.

Mark

The worry is of course that you've damaged the head gasket.

As part of the cooling system work they should have and perhaps did perform:

1) cooling system pressure test. This looks for leaks both internal and external. External leaks obviously mean coolant is dripping on the ground somewhere. But NO external leaks visible while still losing pressure would indicate possibly the head gasket is leaking.

2) cylinder leakdown tests- these would show compression leakage from one cylinder to another, as well as piston ring damage and valve problems.

Have these tests performed and see what the results are.

Whooshing on acceleration CAN be due to a bad check valve for the climate control vacuum system.
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Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: 87 244DL- 249K, B230F/M47, Turbo sways, Bilsteins, GT braces, Virgos, Turbo exhaust, Gislaveds for winter!