loss of coolant, didnt overheat not blown headgasket?

kwikcoupe

Registered User
So a few years ago I was coming back from eastern washington during ths ummer mionths. it was pretty hot say 105 degrees. travevling at say 100 mph for say 3 hours. Well my car has always ran cold or say the gauge says. I tried a new sender, thermostat and was about to replace the gauage befoire this happened (basically the gauge never moves but occasionally).

Anyway Im travevling down the road and the gauge starts to move and I get the dreaded smell of coolant burning. You know that sweet smell of disaster. So i pull of the exit and go to a gas station where i pop my hood and the engine is covered with oily dots. the cooling system is 100% dry. Ive been leaking oil for a while so thats no biggy i was used to that. The engine is hot but not oerheated according to the gauge.

So mu question is what could have caused this? Ive still got the same power as always. Im not blowing steam ou the exhaust and my dipstick looks normal when checked, no foamy white stuff. I drove the car home and havent drove it since. Im afaid i did do something bad and i dont want to know. I filled the radiator to see if holds just sitting and havent cecked back yet. Any other thoughts. On the way home I had to climb 2 mountains and go say 200 miles after this happened and the car drove the same powerwise.

Please help with ideas. Im mechanically knowledgable but am flat out intimidated but the SC
 
Well if you've refilled the cooling system and you have no visable leaks or drips more than likely your HG's are gone.
When mine blew there was not the usual visable stream cloud coming out the exhaust nor did I have any coolant in the oil. I found my problem by toping off the cooling system and letting the car idle in the driveway with the rad cap off until it warmed up enough to start cycleing the thermostat. Once the thermo opened I had a small replica of Old Faithfull the guyser. Coolant would shoot straight up and hit the open hood. Still not wanting to believe it(I've been through this with several cars through the years, I should know better buy hey.....you can always have hope) I did a cooling system pressure test and yeah it confirmed the dead HG.
My leak was just dumping hot combustion gass's into my cooling system and that was pressureizing the system sooo much that it was dumping into the overflow bottle while I was driveing around. By the time the wonderfull factory gauge was showing a problem I had no coolant left in the system.
Sounds like what you're experianceing to me, but I could be wrong.
 
thanks much mike38 Ill try that this weekend hopefully. Just out of curiousity are you still making rads. if so whats the difference between yours and the griffins on SCP? Thanks for the help. Just to clarify the rad cap was on or not. It would seem to pressurize properly the cap would be on and watch the overflow bottle. Just a sidenote the overflow lid was never found after my incident. You may have hit the nail on the head my friend. Mike
 
on mine recently i couldnt find any leaks headgaskets are only about 20k miles on them and no water in the oil i replaced the radiator cap the outside gasket was bad its been holding fluid now
 
The junk factory sensor is not working properly if there is no fluid touching it. I know it should read hot but it is not as hot as the coolant would be if the engine is full. I would bet that your hgs are gone. If you havent had them go before, check at the collector ball at your exhaust manifold. If there is a white ring around it that looks like it was drawn there, that is a pretty good indicator. Not tell tale but you should look deeper and expect the worst.

Chris
 
kwikcoupe said:
thanks much mike38 Ill try that this weekend hopefully. Just out of curiousity are you still making rads. if so whats the difference between yours and the griffins on SCP? Thanks for the help. Just to clarify the rad cap was on or not. It would seem to pressurize properly the cap would be on and watch the overflow bottle. Just a sidenote the overflow lid was never found after my incident. You may have hit the nail on the head my friend. Mike

Yes I still build the rads. Email me at mike38sc@bellsouth.net and I'll be glad to talk to you about whatever you have on your mind. :)
 
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