PINTO CAR CLUB of AMERICA
Welcome to FordPinto.com, The home of the PCCA => General Help- Ask the Experts... => Topic started by: mrmellowgold on April 20, 2015, 09:37:21 AM
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Long story short, I drove my Pinto with low oil one day, didnt know i had such a bad leak. the engine shut off. i put more oil in and it drove fine, but leaked a lot more. couple months later, i drove on a rainy night and apparently the alternator belt came off, so it had no water being pulled into the engine. it over heated like crazy, huge cloud of steam and the car broke down. next day i put on a new alternator belt and filled the coolant. it drove just fine for about three miles, then started to overheat and blow clouds of steam and spew coolant. It would end up boiling out the entire radiator. but still no leak. I dont know what the problem is now. Help!
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BLOWN HEADGASKET OR WORSE CRACKED HEAD
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If its a cracked head, would it drive normal? Because the car drives just as it always has, just after about 3 miles it overheats
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MORE THAN LIKELY HEAD GASKET.COMPRES SION IS LEAKING INTO WATER SYSTEM BUILDING PRESSURE
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"Because the car drives just as it always has, just after about 3 miles it overheat."
I don't mean to sound condescending, but that's because the car has heated up in those 3 miles. At the very least you have either not "burped" the system getting the air out, or the thermostat might be stuck closed. There is the greater possibility when you ran your car low on oil you damaged the bearings, cylinder walls and pistons (amongst other parts). That has creates significant internal friction when the engine is running. It becomes more intense as the engine heats up. So, yes, while you may have a blown head gasket or a cracked head you may also have greater damage than that. If you come away with only a blown head gasket consider yourself fortunate. But, given what you stated I'm inclined to think that there can be more significant damage.
The first place I'd start is removing the spark plugs and observe them for water/coolant. Then I'd run a compression test. Drain the oil into a clean container and look for the milky carmel color of water in the oil. Then slowly pour the oil off into another container and see what is in the bottom (sort of like one pans for gold). If there are metal particles both silver-ish and copper colored then the bearings are probably shot.
Simply put the fluids in an engine are fundamental to it operating as designed. The absence of them is like expecting a human body to function without water and blood. I've made the mistake of thinking I could get home with a blown radiator on a cold, rainy day. And, I paid the price for that kind of thinking too.
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Doing that to any engine will always end up with the death of the car, guess you got 2.0 from your profile photo , that engine has solid lifters and when you run it low on oil it will not make any noises like the ones with hyd lifter which make a lot of racket when you dump the oil pressure, The running hot could be like what Wittsend said, needs to be burped from air , those had a rubber o-ring that sealed the thermostat and some did not a weep hole to purge the air out, Good luck and remember that engine are like electronics, once you let the smoke out of them it's hard (and costly) to put it back,
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Car broke down all right, as in probably permanently.
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Yep , you might be right on that, but on the other hand he kinda lives near me and I could buy the remains 😺