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

Originally Posted by ITHurtzinmybutt

You said the radiator was full of water, thus the pulling the lower hose solution.

I said in an earlier post that I have no way of getting under the car and don't want water and anti-freeze going all over the place and possibly getting into my eyes. Furthermore I don't have jack stands and my driveway is on an incline. So, I just decided to drop the $60 in it for a flush and fill. But as I said the nearest place to safely drive the car is a little shady in my opinion. They called me and said that there was a bunch of coolant and oil laying on the engine block (which the coolant sprayed all over into that area when I did the flush) and that they REFUSE to do a flush and fill until I have them replace the Lower Intake Gasket for $500. They said it was a 5 1/2 hour job. I said no and just picked the car up. Again, everything was fine until one day the check engine light came on and said I needed a thermostat and it was a little low on coolant in the reservoir bottle. When I went to do the flush and fill, the reservoir bottle didn't look like it had oil in it. The oil dip stick according to the shop owner looks "murky" but I think it looks like oil. So, now what do I do?

My brother's brother-in-law used to be a mechanic and he feels that I just have an air pocket and it'll take time to bleed. He said the 3800's are notorious for being hard to bleed. He said to open the bleeder screw and take the cap off the radiator and run the car even up to half way on the temp gauge until it starts to spray out of the bleeder screw. So, weather pending, I'm going to try that tomorrow and if not, then I'm going to try to bleed the system as soon as I can. But does anyone know how to tell if my car is indeed mixing coolant, oil, and water together? Do I really need a Lower Intake Gasket put on for the price of $500?