so my wife called me up one night saying the car was over heating so she pulled over, had the car towed home, topped the coolant when it was cold and bled the system.

i installed a coolant pressure tester and pumped to 16psi and left it for a few hours, snooped around and found nothing leaking (thermostat housing, water pump, water pipe, all coolant hoses). after it sat for a few hours pressurized there was no loss of psi.

i did notice a whistling coming from the top left of the valve cover one of the times i had it running, also the filler cap was hard to remove when it was whistling because off the vacuum. popped the pvc cover and noticed the membrane had a lot of build up. cleaned it off and noticed it was ripped.

could a faulty pcv cause the coolant loss? what else could i be missing?

the car has 170,000. recently had the transmission replaced with a salvaged one with 60,000 and replaced the transmission oil cooler with a brand new one (the original one failed and mixed coolant into the transmission).

 

Someone else here just had similar mystery leak. Was caused by radiator which only leaked when hot.

 

thanks for the heads up. do you know which thread it is? im looking through the countryman forums and im having a hard time finding it.

 

i will be going back under, watched a few videos and looks like theres some areas i missed... like the aux water pump on the front drivers side next to the oil cooler.

 

Not CM but radiators are radiators

mystery leak

 

Head Gasket....Get a Block Tester and see if there are exhaust gases in the coolant.

 

check the connection on the bottom of the overflow bottle. I moved mine for an oil change and noticed that if I held it a certain way it would leak a bit of fluid.

 

theres bubbling in the coolant tank every so often, smells like fuel when i put my nose in the bung. and white vapor out the passenger tailpipe.
also noticed the water pump is leaking. it could have caused the over heat and blown the head gasket/warped block.

 

head gasket failure.

 

I'm surprised that no one mentioned the PCV Valve. It's integral to the valve cover and that whistling sound is a common symptom of that membrane being ripped. It also explains the excess vacuum when trying to take off the oil filler cap. I don't know how you "popped the PVC cover" since it's moulded on on those things?

 

I think it's still a bad head gasket, Never seen a PCV cause a car to overheat. A bad head gasket will put exhaust gas pressure throughout your whole engine. just my 2cents

 

Yeah the PCV cover comes off and you can just replace the membrane. It’s cheap and easy, if nothing else it will cure your vacuum leak and improve your fuel economy too.

 

 

Nice. That could have saved me some $$. My independent told me that I had to replace the whole valve cover. Easier for them, I suppose... Thanks! :-)

 

.

 

id check in with that side of the forums.