burning coolant?

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every time i drive my car, my coolant in the resavor goes down. it always does this and its like the engine is burning my coolant. is this true? where is it going? im adding coolant like every week. i am under a 60/40 mixture with the green stuff. ever since my accident my car been like this. i just had the water pump replaced too...help..
 
If it was my car, first thing I'd do is pressure test my cooling system. If no external coolant leak was found, then I'd do a fast oil analysis. If you're burning coolant, you're oil quality is in big trouble.
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[ March 14, 2003, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: harry ]
 
I've got issues with the pressure test technique for diagnosing things.

Water is quite viscous, and air is quite compressible.

So if you have a system filled with water, pump air in over the top, and rely on the (small) leakage to drop the pressure, you won't see much unless it's a big leak.

Remember, the coolant is at 14 or so psi, and the cracks (or whatever) are at their largest when the engine is running.

So a half hour test cold won't tell you very much.
 
If you are adding that much and no observable physical leak then your head gasket is probably leaking coolant into the cylinders and it is being vaporized during combustion. Now, this probably will not show up in oil analysis, it may but so far in my case it has not and I believe I have a similar problem. Now, if the leak is bad enough and enough coolant gets into the cylinder, well, coolant doesn't combust so you will ruin another component.

there is the leak down test and a pressure test and pull the plugs to see if coolant is being burned. A head gasket is one expensive repair on many engines so the test to determine the source of loss is worth it.
 
Do you get white smoke when you start the engine? I had that symptom and loss of coolant on a car I had some years ago.

To troubleshoot it, here's what my brother the mechanic, and I did. Pulled the sparkplugs. Attached a cooling system pressurizer to the radiator and pumped the cooling system to the pressure indicated on the radiator cap. My brother has this neat little flashlight that has the bulb on a stalk. You can insert the bulb through the hole for the sparkplug so you light-up the cylinder from the inside. After a few minutes, ah ha, the one cylinder had a small pool of green coolant forming in it.

This was an excellent demonstration of a bad head gasket leaking coolant into one of the combustion chambers.
 
These can be real tough to diagnose but there seeems to be a concensus that you have a bad head gasket. First thing I would do is pull the plugs and compare them. Have heard that small leaks into a combustion chamber will sometimes cause the plug to turn a whitish color since it is burning the chemicals in the antifreeze as well as the air/fuel mixture. Many years ago a relative had a problem similar to this and thinking that I actually knew something about engines (which I don't) he brought it to me and I pulled the plugs to run a compression test. Had one of those cheapo compression gauges where you have to hold it in the spark plug hole with hand pressure. Well, as he turned the engine over on the first cylinder we tested, the gauge blew out of my hand and coolant spurted out of the spark plug hole so we were able to diagnose the problem.
 
my plug color is rust brown a very little brown. plugs 2 and 3 have this. i guess cause the seal was leaking an it leaked into the spark plug area, though no oil on spark plug.


i checked inside the raidiator today and its full, no problem. humm..weird
 
i think i found what it was....when i put the colant to a 50-50 mix i didnt mix it all the way, so it burned out the water and left the coolant...as of now its stable and no more loss and it is acting normal...thanks guys...ne other suggustions would be accepted
 
quote:

Originally posted by digitaldrifter91:
i think i found what it was....when i put the colant to a 50-50 mix i didnt mix it all the way, so it burned out the water and left the coolant...as of now its stable and no more loss and it is acting normal...thanks guys...ne other suggustions would be accepted

this doesnt make sense at all!.... you shouldnt have to "mix" it well... the cooling system is sealed and pressurized, in fact, a few summers ago i ran STRAIGHT water in my old beater for a few weaks... never lost any of it! you must have a leak...
 
Sounds like there was air stuck in it somewhere.

Last coolant change on one of my cars took two weeks of daily driving to stop "consumption".
 
im not completly sure, haha that was my conclusion and u guys got a point. it coiuld be that there was air or i got a leak. only an oil analysis can tell i think. but if i had a coolant leak in the oil woiuldnt the oil change color? haha in about a week ill find someone to do a pressure test on my cooling system. that would tell me something =)
 
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