I posted a while ago after having an overheating problem in my legacy. After reading and more reading and much helpfull advice from the faithful (thank you) I came to the conclusion that I should have an 'exhaust gas in the coolant' test done to to find out if despite no oil in the coolant and no coolant in the oil, I didn't have a head gasket failure. I took it to a garage and a guy brought out a test tube thingy that you put in the rad fill hole. He proceeded to fill it with the blue solution and said that if it turned green then it was a sure sign that I had a problem. It turned green. I drove home, stopping every time the overheating started to let it cool down. I parked the car in my driveway, took the insurance off and started preparing for the big job of removing the engine and rebuilding it.

 

Three months went by before I got around to doing anything on that engine. By then I started to question if the test was faulty. It occured to me that the coolant wasn't circulating at the time of the test. It was stationary and because of that was starting to boil at the block when it started to overheat. Then I remembered hearing a whistling/ringing sound before the car started it's overheating and reasoned it could have been a water pump bearing. On that hunch I decided to just replace the water pump and thermostat only and see if the engine ran fine or if I still had problem. Well, my hunch was right, the water pump was fried, metal particles in the coolant and everthing. (Should've checked that) Long story short, the cars been running three weeks now and no problems. I'm glad I didn't jump right into replacing the head gaskets.

 

So a word of warning, those tests don't work when you're coolant is boiling. Makes sense now but had both me and a mechanic fooled.

Sounds good, an HG job would have been an big waste of money.

 

CO in the coolant could stem from the boiling filling the overflow and then as the coolant gets pulled back during the cool down it pulls some air back in. The air in an engine room could easily contain some CO.

I had a cooling fan NOT kickin in that caused me similar symptoms.

 

Sounds like your cured!!!

Good Luck,

Glenn

82 SubaruHummer

01 Forester