Tales From the Garage

OK this may only be for my own conscious and maybe one other reader but here is mechanics uncovered.
This is a possible horror story turned good by the use of a second opinion. A customer contacted my shop requesting the price for replacing the heads on his Bonneville. This car had a 3.8 liter engine in which the water pump had failed and the engine had overheated. The water pump was replaced however the customer was noticing that he was having to add coolant regularly. He took his car to a major franchise shop and was told the heads were warped and it would cost $2500.00 to repair the car. He was also told that if he kept driving the car he would blow the engine up and cost $5000.00 to replace the engine. Since he did not want to spend either amount he simply started using water in the cooling system instead of anti-freeze. The result was the engine started overheating again and the coolant was rust colored.He contacted my shop and I told him to put coolant not water in the radiator and asked him to bring me the car and I would check it out for him and give him an estimate. I met him as he pulled up and asked him to open the hood and the first thing I found was the system was not under pressure even though the engine was at or slightly higher than normal operating temp. I checked and found no water in the oil. This is just a visual check done by removing the fill cap and turning over and looking for what looks like chocolate foam on the underside. If you see any there you check the valve cover and see just how much has accumulated. The second part of this test is to check the coolant system for oil. If the heads warp a lot of times the head gasket will first leak from the water jacket into the oil passage. I aways check both the oil and coolant because I have found that if the PCV port plugs up enough moisture can accumulate in the oil to put foam in the cap. This is most often observed in the Ford 5.0 liter engine with the breather tube connected in the fill neck.Back to the car at hand. Both tests showed a negative result so I did a block test. This is done by taking a sample of the air in the radiator using a tube filled with a chemical indicator liquid. The liquid starts out blue but will change color to yellow if there is any combustion gases present in the radiator. Tells you without a doubt that you have a problem. Leaking head gasket or cracked head. Regardless if you get a positive here you have your work cut out for you. However I got a negative here also, so I asked the customer how the other shop had determined that his head was warped because the engine was running fine and it had no leaks other than the fact that the system would not pressurize. By the way it was the radiator cap. the gasket in the cap was torn. That was the first thing that I checked when I found the system not under pressure and no major leaking. The only coolant leak that was visible was at the overflow tank. He told me they had pulled two plugs out of the engine and they were wet so it had to be coolant that was leaking into the cylinders. For the record if you ever have coolant get into the combustion cylinder it will result in the most beautiful white smoke coming out of the exhaust that you have ever seen. It is also very sweet smelling since you are basically burning a sugar. I am not talking about the condensation smoke you see on a cold day I am talking a white cloud so thick that no one behind you can see where they are going. Or if you live in the south and have seen a fogger truck that is the smoke the engine will produce if the coolant gets into the cylinder.I explained my findings to the customer and told him that at most he may need a thermostat because of the rust buildup but the only problem that he really had that I could say for sure was a bad radiator cap and an engine that needed to have the coolant system cleaned out good to remove the results of using straight water instead of coolant.Now a little science content. Coolant is not just an anti-freeze. It has wetting agents and anti boil chemicals in it that keep it from boiling away in todays hotter engines. Also the coolant system must be able to hold pressure or even coolant will boil and not efficiently cool the engine. Long story short the $2500.00 repair ended up costing $50.00 for the block test, coolant system cleaning, radiator cap and new coolant. The system was tested and found that the thermostat was working, the fans worked and the system held pressure. It was run for twenty minutes and showed no signs of coolant loss, smoke or overheating.The customer did tell me that he knew nothing about cars what so ever and I warned him that in some shops that was not the thing to say. It really bothers me that anyone should have to be warned about that but the fact is that in a lot of shops that comment will triple your bill so don’t say it please. You don’t need to act like you know about the mechanics because the service tech will know the deception within two or three questions then it’s still open season.Good luck out there and if you find an honest mechanic that you trust stay with him and quite literally follow him from shop to shop. You will find that mechanics move from time to time.