![]() Not even the thermostat had any goop or buildup. But I didn’t take any pictures - there wasn’t anything to take pictures of. The thing is that I was all prepared to take pictures of the “aftermath” as I tore it down - pics of goopy glops of crud clinging to the internals of the coolant passages. Could be a long story, but all I could find was a small separation of the sealing ring at one side of cylinder 2). Luckily my wife had a few days off from work (only 2 cars), and I could make the time. ![]() (Still ran ok and no signs of coolant loss). If you didn’t know there was a problem you wouldn’t have reason to suspect one.īut, a couple of weeks ago, the combustion leak suddenly expanded (first hot day of the year and I had to drive it relatively hard?), and now my reservoir looked like a tea pot at full boil. ![]() Knowing full well that it was a bad idea, I continued to drive it for the next 3.5 months and about 8000 miles. I got in touch with the company & they said “might as well just add the other half of the bottle.” So I did, and got no change. But on shut down the gasses would cut off the siphon effect for the overflow back to the radiator, so I did have to keep an eye on the coolant level in the radiator - sometimes pulling it back from out of the reservoir. Luckily the radiator cap is the highest point, so it mostly just purged itself as it went. I did borrow a block tester and make sure it was combustion gas. I’d have to stand at the overflow and watch for a good minute, and every once in while it would send out a little bubble or two. However, it left a combustion leak into the cooling jacket - but at a tiny trickle. Short story: it solved the cold misfire and coolant loss. All I could say to my wife as I poured was “I can’t believe I’m doing this…” But what the heck. I’d say “bottle of monkey snot” might be a good description. I have to tell you that it actually made me a little nauseous pouring that stuff in. ![]() So I bought a bottle and added half, which is the “dose” for a smaller 4 cylinder engine. So to use this one, you just dump it in, get the car up to temp and then let it cool down all the way. I found a different type from a major manufacturer of stop leak-type products that contains sodium silicate, but also a bunch of other stuff, and is supposed to be compatible with coolant. So I quickly figured out that if I followed the directions on the bottle it would take me longer to apply the sodium silicate treatment than it would to just fix the head - so nothing gained there. So for all of the pre-flushing and post-flushing you’re supposed to do it takes a long time - at least to go according to directions. These are apparently incompatible with coolant. So given its age and mileage I thought, why not give mechanic in a bottle a whirl? It seemed a good excuse to do some first hand observing.įirst I checked out the straight sodium silicate bottles (blue devil and the like) to see how you’re supposed to use it. The car is in remarkably good shape for its age/mileage and the heads on these are not hard to do. ![]() The symptoms were an occasional, temporary misfire (cyl 2 - P0302) upon cold start up if the temps got down to less than 40F or so, relatively minor coolant loss, mostly external but some internal, and a small amount of bubbles in my coolant overflow. I suppose its something in the family of OK4450’s experiments with acetone in his gasoline (if I’m remembering that correctly).īack in November my '97 Escort developed a small head leak. I’m just posting this for anyone who might be curious, so there’s no question. ![]()
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