[RedDragon]

I have a '93 Taurus GL, 3.0L V6. I love my car and have invested much in aftermarket mods. I speciallize in interiors and radio equip. but am lost when it comes to engines.
The other day I was cruising the strip showing off my car which was running great. When it just started overheating. I headed home and the car shut it's self off on the way home due to overheating. I got the car to my house and took a look at it and noticed that my Radiator was leaking behind my Trans-axle coolant insert. So I replaced the Radiator. When I fired it up it dragged out and didn't want to start. When it finally started it kept dogging out and spurting, and huge clouds of smoke came out of the tail pipe. I decided to run it around the block to see if it was just something in the exhaust that could be blown out. Unfortunatly it wasn't. The car has slugish HP under 45 mph then runs decent after that. When I come to a stop it trys to choke out. After running for a few the smoke stops puring out of the tail pipe almost completely and it starts to overheat again, the radiator is cool, and the fan blows cold air, the thermostat is fine. Right now I am wworking on taking the catylitic converter of ( which is a task of it's own ) and am going to try and knock the porcelain ot of it, to see if it's just clogged.
If anyone might now what is really wrong with it, or any info that might help I would greatly appreciate it.
I love my Taurus and really don't want to have to junk it, I really don't have alot of money to work on it.

 

[JasonBVHS]

after replacing your radiator, are you losing any coolant. if so it sounds like your headgasket may need replaced.

 

[93 sable]

The symptoms you are describing sound identical to my 2 sables when I bought them with blown headgaskets. Dosen't want to keep running, stalls, steam out of the exhaust, sputtering and general running like sh*t when at lower Rpm's / and smooths out at higher Rpm's, and the overheating. Since you drove the car with an overheating engine to the point at which it shut off, I have to say that the head gaskets are probrably toast, and you may have a warped head.

Don't tear apart your cats unless your planning on replacing them anyway, a clogged cat won't produce smoke or overheating and the car will still idle fine, but will run like crap under load.

To test quickly if a head gasket is bad, start the car up when it's cold and loosen the radiator cap, put it back on and wait like 10 seconds, then loosen it again, if there's lots of pressure, then the head gasket is bad. There will also be evidence of water in the oil, and possible oil in the coolant. But the last 2 may not have shown up yet if the car hasn't been run with a blown HG for very long. Als smell the exhaust of the car, if it smells like coolant, then that's a definate sign. One of my sables actually had coolant dripping out of the tailpipe.

 

[mwt]

Red Dragon. It sounds like the radiator went out on your car and then you drove it until it overheated to the point of stalling. You can't overheat it until it dies and expect it not to cause mechanical failures.
If you are lucky the headgaskets are all that blew. Hopefully you didn't burn the pistons or rings.

I am finished with my rant

Mike
B)

 

[Bob Gervais]

Thread cleaned up so that we may adress the poster's original problem.

As the others have mentioned, it sounds like you overheated to a point of head gasket failure, possibly more.

Have a compression check performed, and base your repairs on that. Please feel free to ask more questions if you need to. We're here to help.

 

[93 sable]

RedDragon: Where are you from?

If the headgaskets are indeed blown, it's not really that hard to replace. Before I replaced the headgaskets on my car, i had never done any sort of involved repair before, the big thing about the job is just keeping track of parts, and it's a lot of physical work too, I was pretty beat up at the end and I was glad the job was done, but I did it with regular hand tools and one swivel attachnemt for my socket.

If you want to be really cheap, you could just buy the headgasket kit which comes with all the gaskets you need to do the job and only use that, and fix the car without resurfacing the head. Oh, I forgot your car overheated, that could be a problem. You can have a machine shop check the head for straightness, the shop said mine was fine, but I had them machine it and do a valve job anyway.

 

[RedDragon]

Thanks everyone. I am from Cincinnati OH, I do believe it is the head gasket, I found one of my spark plugs blowing out steam tne plugs fireing pins had coolant on it and the wire wasspongy and a little melted, which sucks cause I just put new ones on, 8mm superstock. I hope that's all that's wrong and I can get it running again cause I just ordered a 1300 dollar diablo door kit for it. LOL.

 

[jedhead]

It's been my experience that when you run a overheated engine until it quits that more than head gaskets are needed to repair the engine. Most likely the heads are warped too. Also most likely coolant got into your engine oil and later your engine bearing will fail pretty soon if they have not already. I suggest you replace or rebuild your engine.

Bob

 

[Bob Gervais]

Originally posted by jedhead@Sep 23 2004, 06:43 PM
It's been my experience that when you run a overheated engine until it quits that more than head gaskets are needed to repair the engine. Most likely the heads are warped too. Also most likely coolant got into your engine oil and later your engine bearing will fail pretty soon if they have not already. I suggest you replace or rebuild your engine.

Bob

I agree. It's a pretty common trait on the 3.8l's that have blown headgaskets to suffer rod bearing failure soon after. Especially if the car sat a while until it was repaired. Something to do with the coolant eroding the babbit on the bearing surface, IIRC.

 

[93 sable]

Originally posted by Bob Gervais+Sep 23 2004, 08:22 PM--><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Bob Gervais @ Sep 23 2004, 08:22 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-jedhead@Sep 23 2004, 06:43 PM
It's been my experience that when you run a overheated engine until it quits that more than head gaskets are needed to repair the engine.  Most likely the heads are warped too.  Also most likely coolant got into your engine oil and later your engine bearing will fail pretty soon if they have not already.  I suggest you replace or rebuild your engine.

Bob

I agree. It's a pretty common trait on the 3.8l's that have blown headgaskets to suffer rod bearing failure soon after. Especially if the car sat a while until it was repaired. Something to do with the coolant eroding the babbit on the bearing surface, IIRC. [/b][/quote]
A guy at a Volvo board I visit posted a picture of the bearings he pulled out of his engine that had sat for a while with coolant in the oil, they had gotten eaten away by the coolant and got large dark spots on them. I'll try and find the picture.