Topic: Coolant..... Fun times

[forestergreg]

Series of events, pulled up in front of my house last night noticed my car was making some louder ticking noises which I'm leaning towards being a throwout bearing. Anyways, I popped the hood and I noticed my coolant overflow was almost full to the tits. Looking around a bit more I saw coolant sitting on top of the plastic shrouding underneath the rad/ reservoir.

Also I noticed once I turned the car off there was some gurgling coming from the upper reservoir (the one on top of the engine).

Today I went out there popped the hood checked my fluids, no coolant in my oil, no oil in my coolant. The upper reservoir was pretty low and overflow was still pretty full. I started the car without the cap on and I noticed it was bubbling, just little bubbles not big gulps.

Now anytime you Google anything about coolant head gasket comes up. I'd like to hope that my freshly imported 2002 STI did not blue a head gasket in 3 months. Mileage is 134***

[Jay89]

Do a compression test and a cylinder leak test

[forestergreg]

Sounds good I'll see if my mechanic can do that this week. I also read that there is a sniffer test? From what I gather its a tool that reads if there is exhaust present in your cooling system. Any Whittier with that?

[Dr Beans]

I agree that this sounds like a head gasket.

Is your cars exhaust white? Any overheating issues? Unless air is somehow being introduced to the cooling system externally and the system is still able to hold pressure (no visible coolant leaks/drips) then this is a head gasket issue.

[forestergreg]

Oil is clean, coolant is clean, temp gauge is always just below half mark. I did find a bit of coolant but I don't entirely know where is it coming from. I'm thinking either the overflow or rad.

[Gargoyle]

when the head gasket went in my 02 wrx they said it was leaking between the cylinder and the coolant, so essentially exhaust is getting into the coolant and that's it, no oil and coolant mixing whatsoever, at least that's how i understood it

[forestergreg]

Yeah I've read that as a possibility which crossing my fingers that isn't the issue. Did they say your car was still drivable with it just leaking exhaust to the coolant?

[Mason]

If sounds like it’s also time to do the timing belt if it wasn’t done already too

[Gargoyle]

I did drive it for a little while before i even took it in, before i knew what was wrong the temp gauge started doing weird things, i started just filling up the coolant and i guess the exhaust just pushes it back out so you have to keep adding more, which i guess you can do, but as the leak gets worse you'd have to be adding more and more until you can't keep up

[Mason]

Did you get the system flushed and appropriate temp coolant for our weather?

[forestergreg]

Update:

Took it to my mechanic, he had other jobs run long so he wasn't able to do the tests. We went over the car together and he told me I shouldn't worry at this point. He said he would do the tests another day for me but he thinks it's ok but just to monitor my coolant and temps.

Thanks for all the input guys it's been another good learning exclusive from wsc!

[mudferret]

FWIW I had some nice bubbling in my rad once (06 WRX), which ended up being a VERY minor issue.

<Fuzzy memory> But I think I replaced the coolant overflow hose; fuzzy memory again, it was cracked and was sucking in air and introducing it to the system </Fuzzy memory>.