So I finally got my car rebuilt from blowing the headgasket a couple weeks ago. I'm out driving around last night and start to smell something, pull over and my coolant is gone. I walk to Walmart, buy some water and pour it in and I might as well have been pouring it strait onto the ground. I call a friend who brings some tools and a light. We check all the hoses and everything is connected and appears fine. Finally find this...



Coolant temps never read above 215, but I've got no idea how hot it actually got before I smelled the motor melting. I got it towed home last night but haven't touched it since. I don't think I can handle more bad news at this point.

It'd be one thing if I'd just fucked something up on the rebuild, but a busted radiator hose? WTF? Hopefully it's not too bad.

 

It's the simple crap I miss that really pisses me off. Hoping you got away with it.

 

That's rough man. Exact same thing happened to a friend of mine, I had to change his lower hose out at 2am in the parking lot of where I used to work. Its always the little **** :/. On a positive note, I really doubt you killed something. Just do a compression/leakdown test, fill it back up and kick ***.

 

Do you think a slow leak from that split when it was just starting might have caused your initial problem? Perhaps low coolant leads to overheating leads to head gasket?

 

I don't think so. I've put about 500 miles on it since the new head went on and it hasn't leaked a drop of anything until last night. I've been looking over it really close since I redid the headgasket, checked coolant and oil right before I went out last night and they were both perfect.

Thanks for the kind words guys. Hopefully tomorrow I can get up the courage to put a new hose on and give her a try, haha.

 

That is some trash man, hopefully its nothing.

 

Coulda been worse. JayL busted a heater hose (while at idle?) while being interviewed at pinks lol.

 

now you know why you blew the headgasket...

 

Sucks....It should be fine, if you shut it down quick. It would probably be a good time to change every hose all the way down to the little ones. Or atleast start working on getting them changed out. If one is blowing, they are all probably starting to get hard.


Good Luck!

 

You may already know this but I'll post it anyway for the benefit of those who don't. Coolant temps won't ever read higher than 215 from your Megasquirt, unless you've modified your setup. Your analog coolant sensor is converted to 8-bit digital by MS, giving you a range of 256 possible values. Since somebody who wrote the code decided that MS should be able to read all the way down to -40F coolant temperatures, the max it will report is 215F. For all you know, your car could have been at 250F. Unlikely that it got that hot, I'm just sayin'. If the gauge in Megatune was pegged on 215 for a good length of time while you were low/out of coolant, your actual temp likely went hotter than that. How much hotter, I dunno. Did you happen to notice how high your stock dash gauge went?

 

you can make it read above that in the MT software and logs, the MS unit itself will just have no clue. once the stock gauge moves above 11 o clock, you're over 215*F.

 

That 215 I was reading was off an AEM water gauge. I'm pretty sure it got warmer than that, it doesn't read air temps too well.