Having some coolant issues with my '97 jap wrx. She's pressurising the coolant and blowing it out the overflow anytime she hits boost, but there are no other signs of headgasket failure.

I reckon im looking at a minor headgasket leak, or maybe even a minor crack in the head.

Any other thoughts?

Anyway, what i wanted to ask, on the overflow theres a 1inch diameter pipe out the bottom of it, which leads into the passenger side wing. Can anyone tell me where this leads? is it just an overflow pipe? or is there some kind of reservior in there, or does it go round to the rear of the engine?

cheers folks, dont have time to remove the splash guard to look myself

 

hi the one inch pipe goes to a small resorvior tank

 

Cheers Pete

does this reservoir have a lid? or an overflow pipe out of it?

I put the garden hose down the overflow pipe beside the battery when i was flushing the system and i heard/seen water flowing out from my wing, where this 'secret' reservoir is.

 

The pipe from the header tank leads directly to the expansion/overflow reservoir in front of the battery. The reservoir is linked to a secondary 'bladder' reservoir hidden in the passenger wing, thus acting a bit like a toilet's U-bend, IYSWIM.

BTW, it does sound like a HG failure (only has to be the tiniest fracture to lift up on boost (this happened to me!). Or it could be an erroneous airlock?

 

Dont think its an airlock, done about 4 coolant changes now, using various coolant additives in an attempt to block the HG leak. All failures

Next stage, headgasket swap i think, few questions though:

Is it possible to do the Headgaskets with the engine in situ in this car?

Are these engine prone to head warping? or head cracking?

And how possible or likely is it to get away without a pressure test/skim? only wet&dry the surface face of the head?

are the head bolts stretchy bolt? or reuseable?


lots of questions, sorry folks!

 

Probably - but a bit like decorating your hall through the letterbox! Not advised... and certainly not practised by the specialists.


No - but not impossible. Bound to be HG.


If an extremely light surface skim to true up then no problem. Anything more, then trash the head/s.


I don't think so. Can be reused if engine builder passes them fit...


That's what we're all here for!

 

could it not be that you filing it up to much i mean once it blown out what it does not want what the level like and does it stay there after another bit of boost

 

That's indeed possible ^^^

 

and if it is still blowing more and more then maybe go for an old fashion block test not these new eletronice sniffer test as there a bag of shi"t the old liquid test to see if it changes colour any good garage should do this for free

 

Also OP - and you're not gonna like this - being a 97, I assume it's got well over 50k miles on her?

If so, most specialists recommend on doing the bottom end (new bearings... and maybe pistons/rods/honed bores!) - as well as the HGs!

The reason being, that the new HG/s will have restored the CR back to it's former factory-fresh glory - thus putting lot's more pressure on, an otherwise, much weakened bottom end...

 

How sure is everyone that there is a second header tank in the wing?

My overflow pipe goes into the wing but i can pull it out of the wing, I just presumed it overflowed to ground?

Ta

 

Have you tried a new cap on the expansion tank ?

 

There IS a second 'bladder'-like reservoir in the passenger wing (that the overflow tank by the batt joins to).

 

started stripping engine to lift out, surprisingly easy to strip her down, reckon ill have it out in another hour, total time from start to out will be 2hr 30mins. Not bad considering ive only done a few engine swaps before on different cars.

@happydude, i fill it to approx 1inch below the top of header tank. Blows out between 1 and 2 litres every drive. still no overheating or exhaust smoke, or oil/water mixing.

and yep, got a chemical/liquid sniff test done a few days ago, turned colour immediately to yellow.


@joz, yeah, 150,000km's on her .... but sack that ****, gonna take a steel rule to the mating surface of the head, if thats straight, cool, give her a clean down and light wipe with 1500grit wet&dry. Just want her running so i can sell her at this stage, she's breaking my heart

@JDM stig, yep, new cap was my first port of call, old one was missing the rubber altogether!



So, new questions,

Is there a length tolerance for the headbolts to see if they're reusable? I have no haynes manual here or spec list, nothing fancy like that, you guys are my only source of info

An do you use an instant gasket silicon on the new headgasket and/or mating surfaces? or just leave bare metal on gasket?



Only cars ive done engine swaps and headgaskets on before were several 306 Dturbos, this is my first petrol turbo, so just want to be sure about things.


Cheers lads.

 

Phil, I have an OEM 0.9bar cap I can post out to you for free. It was working fine - I just replaced it with a new one when I was trying to rule out my coolant problems about 18 mths ago,. The cap was fine in the end.

I also have a Buddy Club 1.3bar one too - these fetch about £30+ on eBay, but seeing as it would help a fellow member out, you can have it for a tenner.

Personally, I'd take the free 0.9bar one, as the pressure in a proper working coolant system should not get to that anyway... let alone 1.3bar!

 

Phil,

The OE headbolts are reusable. They are not stretch bolts.

This info came from RCM, whilst I was doing my engine rebuild!

Hope that helps!

Dave