Thread: New member - first question. Might be very serious.

I remember looking at the front and back of the lower intake manifold and there was no coolant laying there. I did see grime built up, but not fresh oil. Actually the buildup looks dryer than the picture you have here. My car has 197,000 miles so my guess is that it's been changed before, at least once. There is coolant lying there now because I had the plastic cover off the engine when I did the flush and the coolant flew out of the top radiator hole all over the engine. My big question is, this looks like an easy area to get to. Am I wrong? Does this really take 5 1/2 hours to do this gasket swap?

This is a really stupid question and I think I know the answer but I want to confirm it before I start driving the car longer distances. I FINALLY tonight was able to add a gallon of full strength antifreeze to the car but I had the bleeder screw off and once it stopped spraying a tad out, I put a little more antifreeze in it. TO ME, it looked like water coming out of the bleeder screw hole but once the radiator level went down a tad, it would always stop spraying water out of that hole. So to me I think what happened was as the water in the radiator was slowly going into the engine and then I had a little room to keep adding antifreeze to the radiator. It took me over an hour to add the antifreeze. But, I have one gallon of pure antifreeze into the radiator, I think. My question is, once I cap the radiator, which I did, will the system pressurize and move the antifreeze all around and let it mix with the water? And how long should that take? The reason I want to know is, the next step that I want to do is to go to AutoZone and use a tool to find out what my antifreeze to water mixture is. I know they made a thermometer that would tell you how cold of temperature you were protected to back in the day, so I just want to make sure that I have a good mixture. Also, I didn't see any anti-freeze on the back section of the Intake and I'm pretty sure 99% that the antifreeze that is stuck in little puddles on the front side is from when I did the flush and it went everywhere. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't have to do a lower intake gasket replacement. This car I bought is for my son and will be his first car. It seemed perfect until the check engine light came on for the thermostat and now the engine light is back off and it's starting well again and it's at least putting out heat so I hope I've completed the "flush and fill". And I hope it doesn't need a costly gasket job.

Originally Posted by ScottyDoggs

let it idle rad cap off till the fans come on. when the fans come on your temp is like 212, the t stat is wide open. before the fans come on the rad may burp and take some more coolant, this is the t stat opening for a few seconds till cool coolant hits it and it shuts again.

when the fans are on open the bleeder screw, if coolant comes out your all set. top off the rad cap it. run it around for a little drive to make sure its not gonna over heat.

next morning open the rad cap check the level, it should be full, if its a few inches low, fill it up, cap it, check it the next morning again, it should be full still.

fill your over flow bottle to the cold line when the car is cold.

Thanks Scotty!