Happy F'in New Year To Me- Update-

[odinn7]

Well, I've been battling an ongoing coolant leak in my car for the past 2 weeks. It all started when I used Walmart Super Tech pre mixed antifreeze that claimed it was good to -34 degrees. Well, 2 weeks ago we hit -4 and the crap froze...Froze like an ice cube. Since then, I have had coolant leaks. I've been losing coolant at the rate of 1 gallon every 3 or 4 days.
Last Friday I thought I found the problem. The water pump was leaking badly so I spent $50 on a pump and 4 hours of my time to fix it. Added another $24 for oil change and thought I'd be ok. It was still leaking but a little slower. Throughout the week, the rate of loss increased to the point that yesterday on my 35 mile trip home from work, I had to pull over twice to refill it. I then saw that coolant was blowing, no, spraying out of the overflow bottle. My experience told me that there is a head or head gasket problem.
I spent the time and took the head off last night and checked everything. The head appeared to be fine but the gasket on the #3 cylinder was blown out. I spent $56 on a new head gasket and went to put it back together today. As I was torquing the bolts, one of them near the #3 cylinder made a snapping noise at just under 20 ft lbs of torque. I took the head back off and there it was...the block was cracked where the head bolt threads in. Upon inspection, I could see that there had been a hairline crack all along it and only a small section of it was actually holding on. This is what had caused the problem in the first place as the bolt had obviously loosened just enough to allow the gasket to blow out.
Unfortunately, now I have spent $130 in the last 2 weeks for parts for this hunk of sh*t, and about 10-12 hours of wasted time. I have a worthless paperweight sitting, taking up space in my garage. The worst part is that I have no money to buy a car, am unable to get a loan, and I work 35 miles from here with no practical way to get there. Thank you Walmart for that high quality antifreeze. I'd love to be able to sue those bastards for the cost of a new engine plus the crap I just went through and will be going through until I find a solution.

I look at this as not a very encouraging thing to be starting the new year with. My luck is normally bad enough without having to start the new year off on a bad note.

[daveblackeye15]

Sorry to hear about your car troubles odinn7.

At least they'll always be bad movies to cheer you up.

[dean]

Well that certainly is a bugger...

Sometimes I really do think a horse and chariot would be far less troublesome and less expensive to run than a car these days.

[trekgeezer]

That's really a sucky note to start out the year on. I wish there was a way to help you other than just moral support, but it's kinda hard when you live 800 miles away.

For what it's worth man, I hope the rest of the year goes a lot better for you.

[Mr_Vindictive]

I've had a similar experience with one of my cars, but I'll not go into details since I don't want to hijack the thread.

I hope everything gets better from here.  Sometimes when things start on a terrible note, it will get better from there.

Just curious, did your car happen to be a Ford product?  They have terrible block problems.

[ulthar]

On a plus note, it really happened in 2005.  Silver lining, and all that.  So, maybe it is not a portent of 2006 to come.

Good luck.

[Zapranoth]

I remember a guy I knew in college who, when I told him "it could be worse," always replied,

"It could be better!"

My best friend and his fiancee visited yesterday, and she told me the most awesome car horror story I've yet heard.  She used to have a Kia -- she bought it new, in about '96 (the second year they were made IIRC, so that made her a beta tester) for 8 thousand dollars.  She was so stoked to have a NEW car for ONLY EIGHT GRAND.

So the day she bought it, it had ignition trouble, and she had to take it back for work.  

She owned it for six months, and in those six months she had to have the brakes replaced TWICE, the ignition work, the cylinder head gaskets leaked, and there was some other major issue with an oil leak.  All of these were fixed under warranty, but she had the car at the shop more than it was in her driveway.

The final straw was the day she was driving it and the dashboard fell off *into her lap*.  

She immediately started driving to car lots, asking not "how much will you take this for in trade," but "WILL you take this in trade for anything else?"   She traded it in towards a Nissan Sentra, which never gave her problems.

I've always owned Hondas and Toyotas.  Not buying any Fords, GMs, or other premature obsolence engineering... nope, nope, not gonna do it, not gonna do it, nope nope nope...

[Scottie]

I owned a Nissan Sentra and I never had a problem until someone stole my radio, but no natural car malfunctions. Now I own a Cadillac and other than constant oil leaks from the engine (which would cost a mint to fix), I haven't had any problems. I swore when I first owned the Nissan that I would never buy anything that wasn't Japanese, but the Cadillac has honestly been reliable. It just costs a fortune to refill at the gas pump.

Sorry to hear about the car Odinn. It sounds like with your in depth knowledge of cars. though, you'll be able to find and repair a car that will suit your needs. There are millions of cars in the world like there are fish in the sea. Yours will come along.

And stay away from Wal-Mart brand anything when it's for something important like antifreeze or heart disease medicine.

[ulthar]

Zapranoth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've always owned Hondas and Toyotas.  Not buying
> any Fords, GMs, or other premature obsolence
> engineering... nope, nope, not gonna do it, not
> gonna do it, nope nope nope...

FWIW, I've got a '86 Ford Ranger with over 300,000 on it.  That's probably more my force of will making it last rather than superior engineering on the part of Ford.

[odinn7]

Thanks for the words everyone. I'm sorry I dumped this crap on you guys but I was feeling a little down. I apologize.
My mother-in-law heard of the problems and talked to my father-in-law about it without me knowing. They invited us over today and offered us a loan at a fantastic pay back rate. That is a real help to me. Now all I need to do is find something reliable. I was quite thankful for their help.

I bought some JB Weld today that supposedly will fix almost anything and I "glued" the broken piece back in. Tomorrow I will put it all back together at least to get it out of my garage. With any luck, the JB Weld will hold it together and make it driveable for a few days anyway...at least until I can find a car.

Here's a picture of what broke if you care at all:




Here I am putting the car out of it's misery with my Baby Eagle...well, I'd like to...

[Menard]

That's great that her parents are willing and able to help out. Wish I had your ability with cars.

BTW, thank you for the picture.

[dean]

haha, the picture of you 'putting it out of it's misery' perhaps sums up best the way most people think about their cars, especially when they are heaps of junk which are too costly to replace.

I know my brother definitely felt that way when he bought his first car second hand, and had it pretty much rendered undrivable for six months because it needed so many repairs.  Yet, of course, these repairs were just low enough to justify not selling the car, but high enough to consider it.  

[oh and don't worry about venting here, I'm pretty sure we've all done it at one point or another.]

[odinn7]

Skaboi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Just curious, did your car happen to be a Ford
> product?  They have terrible block problems.
>

Actually it was a Geo Metro with the Suzuki 4 cylinder. I can't really blame the car in this case as I'm positive that the freezing antifreeze expanded and caused this problem since everything was fine up until it froze.
I was an auto mechanic for 15 years and saw plenty of odd things but I can honestly say, this was a first. The way this engine is designed, the antifreeze really had nowhere to go when it froze. The block has freeze plugs in it but where they are placed doesn't really make much sense and basically they did nothing.



And Dean...thanks.

[Andrew]

The JB weld may hold for a while, if the parts were completely degreased and clamped tightly for setting.  I have used the stuff on a crack on an engine (water pump mount) before on a Chevy small block and it did hold.  I just do not know about it holding in that spot.  I would doubt it.

Almost all of my experience is with small block Chevy engines, so I am confused if that was a mounting bolt or is there also a coolant passage right there where the failure happened.  Really weird if there is not a coolant passage - I would guess that the freezing put enough pressure on that specific bolting point to crack the block.  I've seen a frozen small block and, crazy thing, all it did was what is supposed to happen - it popped some of the freeze plugs.  However, I cannot count the times that leaking freeze plugs caused a need for engine repair.  Funky.

[odinn7]

Andrew, that is a coolant passage where the piece broke out. The head bolt goes down in there and it's not all that thick to begin with. The strange part is that the channel all the way around the cylinders is basically just a holding area for coolant. There are no passages or holes along the block anywhere near them. The only way for coolant in or out is down through the holes in the head. This doesn't seem very efficient to me as I can't picture the coolant flowing very well around there.
I suspect that the cheap Japanese casting probably had a weak spot there to begin with and the freezing is just what it took to finish it.