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Coolant spray 200 1993

posted by  scorron on  Fri Jun 8 10:13 CST 2012
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last visit: Tue Oct 7 21:10 CST 2014
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Over the past few months I have noticed a minor leak around the donut seal at the top of my water pump. The leak was very slow (I had to top up the resvoir every couple of weeks) so I pushed it to the back of my mind.

Yesterday I decided to replace the seals since I have had new ones laying around for years. First time I replaced my water pump, the same seal got pinched and blew out, dumping all of my coolant. After a tow home, I replaced the seal and bought a few extras, along with an entire waterpump gasket kit.

As it turned out, several years ago I had purchased a Scan-Tech gasket kit. Knowing what I now do about the quality of their rubber parts, I decided I would not risk it. Long story short, I bought a new GMB pump from the local Advance Auto for $40. BTW, the last pump was GMB as well, and besides the seal issues, the pump itself is still in very good shape after 5+ years and 60k miles.

Anyway, new pump, new coolant. The problem: I bought the orange Dex-cool thinking it would be okay to use after flushing the system with water. Afterall, it says right on the bottle, "For all cars with aluminum radiators."

After reading some horror stories online about Dex-cool, I decided to flush that back out and use the good ol' green stuff. Drain, fill with water, start engine.

Here's the important part (in case you want to skip the backstory). After filling the system with pure water and starting the engine to circulate it, the (bypassed) temp gauge started to climb. This is normal, I knew there would be air pockets that would have to work their way out. So I let the gauge climb to about 3/4 of the way up (let's say a little past 10 o'clock, if halfway is 9). About that time, I saw water spritzing out from the back of the engine, driver's side. Honestly, it looked like it was spraying from the #4 injector, but I frantically shut off the engine before I got a good look. What is back there that might have blown and what might I have damaged? I am really hoping this is not a head gasket problem.

I let the engine cool off, started it back up, rocking the car to dislodge any air pockets, and I no longer see any water spraying. The engine runs fine, and I see no steam shooting out the exhaust, so I'm hoping that rules out a blown head gasket. What else could have been leaking under pressure?

Thanks in advance,
Sean





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