krazykarl

Bringing it back to the shop I had it flushed it to have the coolant system pressure tested, if that turns out alright I'll have them do a leakdown test. Guy I talked to claimed the flush pretty well, but that it was possible they may have left some air.

peanut

944 can be a right bitch to bleed the air out of the coolant system. Most garages probably do not have sufficient regular experience of working on these cars and will just think 'how hard can it be'? . Some cars bleed themselves eventually.
My indie spent hours fiddling around with raised header tanks and hoses and pressure etc before getting all the air out

Fishey

Its not the head "gasket" its the physical head...

Its very common on the S2 heads to see corrosion of the aluminum surfaces (head and block) usually more so the head. Anyways, long story short check exhaust for coolant with a test kit. The entire head will need to be stripped down, Heated up in an oven and then welded before it can be resurfaced.

joes

I had the same problem and it turned out to be a pin hole in the radiator. My advice is don't get excited and spend a lot of money looking for something that may not be easily found if found at all at this stage. You know that you have a problem, keep a close watch it will manifest itself soon enough.

krazykarl

How did you discover the leak? Fluorescent dye?

joes

I just got lucky. I was looking around when I had just came home from work and was shining the flashlight and found it on the inside next to the tank.

krazykarl

ahh, I'll have to take a look next time I run it. So far I've only been looking around the engine.

krazykarl

Well I brought it in this morning and when the shop put the system under pressure they did find a small leak at the end of the upper radiator hose where it connects to the top of the engine by the bleeder screw. Guess I'll give it a couple weeks of driving and go from there.

Z-man

I'd drop the oil to see what's in there before you do anything. Even if it is a small leak, under pressure, you'd see a focused stream of coolant coming out of there.

Ignorance may be bliss, but with cars, ignoring something can lead to bad results!

Query: have you had issues with your oil pressure gauge? Does it sit at the 3 harsh mark, and then all of a sudden it jumps to the 5 mark, or visa versa? If so, your oil pressure sender unit could be gunked up with... you guessed it... coolant.

Yes, I have had a bad experience with this - coolant stuff - my issue turned out to be a crack in the head between cyls 2 and 3. Didn't notice it really during street driving, but on the track, when the head heated up a lot more than on the street, the crack would widen, allowing more coolant into the motor.

The symptoms you describe are similar to what I experienced with the cracked head. Yeah, that would be a worse case scenario - but you may want to check things out now and hopefully save yourself some $$ and work in the future.

krazykarl

Haven't noticed any weird activity with my oil pressure gauge so far, once the car is warm it sits just about 3 at idle and just below 5 when on the gas. I plan on checking my oil in the next week just to be safe.

krazykarl

No evidence of coolant in the oil, came out the pan like normal though there was a bit of sludge around the magnetic tip of the drain plug.

krazykarl

Leak is fixed, but now I appear to be blowing coolant out the overflow tube as I found the tip was wet. I replaced the cap at the beginning of the week, so I guess it's back to a possible head gasket or crack causing coolant pressurization

DarylJ

Its pushing enough out to put you below the cold fill line?

And did the pressure test the shop did come out OK after the leak was fixed? ....and are you sure it's totally bled?

I still don't think it's freak out time

krazykarl

They replaced the small adapter hose and topped the system back off, I don't know if they pressure tested the system afterwords. I ran it this morning at it has dropped again but not as badly as it did yesterday. I'm still getting froth at and above the ball of the dipstick, but nothing new at the bottom of the AOS and the new oil is still clean. I'm wondering of the seal at the bottom of the guide tube might be bad.

krazykarl

definitely still losing coolant somewhere. The added pressure might be pushing it out somewhere else in the in the cooling system, put a bottle on the overflow tube and got nothing.