Car is running like ass with muddy coolant

**intervention** · 12-16-2009

So I was driving my 98 GT today.. Everything was great, til it just started misfiring. It was bearable until I could take a look at it, then the SES light came on. Figured it was nothing. Then it started flashing. I looked at my temp gauge and it was at 230, usually it's at like 170 or something. Then it smelled like crap coming from the tailpipe, so I assumed it was a plugged cat. Then I popped the cap on my radiator and the coolant looked sludgy as hell. now it will not start, it just cranks over.

**Zef_66** · 12-16-2009

Okay, couple things here. The blinking SES light means that you are having tons of misfires. So there is something keeping the spark plugs from firing. And the high temps are probably because you were running the car hard. Or...it was low on coolant. But the crappy coolant doesn't help.

I am going to guess that your LIM gaskets are bad. This would feed coolant into the combustion chamber, causing it to run bad, cause misfires, SES light, etc. In turn, if the LIM gaskets have not been changed, the coolant probably hasn't either. So it either has oil in it, or just gunked up from being old.

My suggestion is take a look at your oil. If they gaskets are leaking that bad, you probably have coolant in your oil and the oil will look milky. Regardless, pull your spark plugs and see if you have coolant in the cylinders. That would point to a lim gasket failure to me.