Well... this weekend i went on a short trip from Moscow to Spokane. Get there, just fine. Tool around for 8 hours and a tank and a half of gas, just fine. Get ready to leave, stop by a friends house, notice the temp gauge is literally 100% pegged at the redline. I freak out, pop the hood, it's not steaming or anything... wait for engine to cool a bit, pop the radiator cap. It's completely emtpy. Dry. So I wait 3 hours for it to cool completely off, so as not to crack the block when I add water (I did this once upon a time, long story). To make a long story short, it started up fine, temps were doing ok, yaddayadda. Got from Northtown to downtown, it did it again. Rad was almost empty. Steaming like a mother. I've a jury-rigged overflow can, about 8 inches of surgical tubing and a tupperware bottle, and it never used to overflow, except during long climbs when temps would rise. Now, it bubbles and spits fluid even when it's cold. Crank the starter, it spits. Heater doesn't work either, for some reason. WTF is wrong with my beast?

 

 

Second question...

 

So after this has happened, I head out, carrying loads of water, stopping every 10 minutes or so to refill the rad. It starts acting normal, 20 minutes later, temps are redline again, and it's dry, making no power whatsoever. Stall out near Colfax, manage to coast/push into some llama farm thingy. Get some water into it, get it cooled off, and go to crank it, and it absolutely refuses to start. Cranks ok, sounds really weird, not to usually chuggy noise, but rather a whiny wee-wee-wee-wee noise. After about ten minutes of cranking, it catches, I take off. Still no power, at all, 0-40 takes about 2 minutes, won't go much faster. Does it a few more times, dies at various stoplights, finally get it home, dies on the spot. Haven't touched the damn thing since. So the question is... is it fried? I'm still rather new to owning my own car, this is only my second. I've fried one car, it had several of the same symptoms, but it had quite a few more. So as a general consensus... is it fried?

 

And if so... who wants it?

 

EDIT: Car is a 1983 2wd wagon, 5spd, EA81.

I'd say that motor is probably done. HGs probably blew, causing low compression and no power as well as the spitting out coolant, and running that much at those temps may have cracked the heads as well. I'm not terribly familiar with the EA81 engine, but on an EA82 it surely would have cracked the heads.

Well... I figure it's had a good run, ticked over to 232k on the way back, so I guess that's it. Thanks:)