antifreeze concentrations and leaking water pump

No reason to believe that Peak's universal long-life is the same as
Prestone's All Makes All Models - i.e., "marketeer's buzz words" does
not equal "chemistry". They may in fact be the same, but just because
they use similar non-technical words to describe it is no indicator to
me of anything.

AFAIK, Peak was not a party to the DexCool disaster. However they
certainly were aware of it - and maybe that was your point (relating to
my comment that I can't see them making that mistake again).

Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

 

It's worse than I thought. The dealer refused to change out the
coolant. It's already mixed with the oil. They suggested a new engine
instead. The water pump is leaking but there is an internal leak also,
either the head gasket, the block or who knows what, but the leak is
there so pointless to change the coolant.

I wonder how I destroyed the engine in 9 months. What do you all think?
1. The engine has 200,000 original miles on it, actually, 203,565
miles.
2. I let the oil go for 9 months and 3,000 miles, so mostly little
trips.
3. I put in 1 quart of SAE 30 to top off 5W-30 semi-synthetic
Conoco-Phillips.
4. What else I do? The coolant came up with a pH of 8 so I let the
coolant flush go for another year, probably making three years total,
at least. I suspect the coolant shot the water pump. Maybe coincidence
but old coolant, even with the right pH, can do that because of
particles in the coolant - or so one person said. Could bad coolant
ruin the engine? I did not think so but?

Was it all a coincidence or is this a big mea cupla idiotus time? To
put in a junky yard 3.0 liter Mitsubishi seems risky since many of them
may have the same problems or other problems. To put in a Chrysler
reman engine for $2660 + $1200 is not doable right now although it
comes with a 3/36 warranty. But that's the cost for another used
vehicle or two or three - is it not?

 

I find it utterly beyond amazing that you're thinking in terms of dollars
and cents when you're facing senseless-dollars wallet rape by the dealer.

I've said it before and I'll shout it again: YOU ARE STUPID TO TAKE AN OLD
VEHICLE TO THE DEALER! THEY DO NOT WANT TO WORK ON IT, AND WILL THEREFORE
GIVE YOU A SUPER-HIGH QUOTE IN HOPES YOU WILL EITHER GO AWAY OR BE DUMB
ENOUGH TO PAY IT!

 

You're wrong, therefore you're angry, says an old quote.

In the beginning, only the dealer was willing to correct the first
major problem, the reprogramming of the transmission, a couple of years
ago. The local mechanics were not interested. Not only did the dealer
charge me a paltry $37 for this but they also fixed two items under
recall that I had not known about. Sure that may be federally regulated
but still, I had asked the local mechanics about reprogramming and that
was beyond their ken or their interest. I had also asked an independent
tranny shop and he waffled a bit which made my think that this
particular dealer would be relatively and comparatively honest, which
this particular dealer was, in contrast to the usual dealer
reputations, apparently.

Now if you are correct, you are stating that mechanics will be willing
to work on this vehicle? And what do you suggest is a fair price for:

1. water pump leaking for sure. so timing belt and water pump
replacement.
2. problem of coolant in the engine oil. how to diagnose or work on
this without tearing down an engine? is it possible. a pressure test
was already done.

? I'm all ears.

 

First, confirm that you actually have motor oil and not transmission fluid
in the antifreeze. Check the dip stick carefully for signs of coolant there
too. One can check to determine if it is a defective head gasket. If the
head is not warped, merely pulling the head and installing a quality gasket
is not all that expensive. If you have a cracked block that is another
story. Your expensive dealer should have been able to tell you if it is the
gasket or not. Go somewhere else for a second opinion. Long oil changes will
not warp the head or attack the gasket. The wrong antifreeze or going too
long on a flush will not attack the gasket. Overheating can/will warp the
head.

Richard.

 

Why would I be angry? It's no skin off my nose if you choose to be stupid
with your vehicle and your money.

No. You're right. I'm wrong. You've got a very special one-of-one Chrysler
minivan that cannot and will not be worked on by anyone but a dealer.
Parts can only be had from the dealer. Labor can only be done by personnel
specially trained in secret procedures, and who know the secret password
needed to order parts. Forgive my previously having misleadingly suggested
that your Chrysler minivan is exactly the same as the millions of other
Chrysler minivans all over the world equipped with your same powerteam.
What *was* I thinking?

Around here, the rough "over the phone" ballpark for labor and parts
including belt tensioner is $475.

Step one: Find a competent tech who will *diagnose* the problem, rather
than taking the lazy way out and saying "Get a new engine".

Step two: Learn that there are many, many degrees of "tearing down" the
engine. Removing the heads to install new head gaskets scarcely counts as
"tearing down" the engine.

And quotes. But not much brain, as it seems.

 

Ordinarily that'd be a wise first step, but in this case it's unnecessary;
we know 'cause the dealer already told him he needs a new engine, and of
course a Chrysler dealer's going to be 200% scrupulous and honest when
dealing with a 12-year-old van with 200K+ miles on it.

Not necessarily true. Dex-Cool (OAT coolant) will attack the gasket.

 

I have not chosen anything so your ranting is strange but par for your
course.

I had to go to the dealer anyway for a state inspection. This time and
last year, the dealer did not even charge me for anything extra, not
even a windshield wiper. Around here, inspection is when most
unscrupulous and even scrupulous mechanics get their windfall. This is
quite rare because I am completely vulnerable at the state inspection.

I did not lose anything or chose anything. I got an oil change and an
inspection and a suggestion from the dealer for an engine change. Now
dealer is an abstraction for people, that is, featherless bipeds. What
was the "dealer" today happened to be the assistant service manager who
is, well, out for the money. There are over six service writers. I
expect this particular assistant manager to be greedy, fine, but he was
not so bad but bad in that he is not inclined to fix my vehicle. I
doubt whether the other service managers would have been so heavy
handed. This mechanic today did not want to work on my car, which is
fine, because that also meant he did not want to add to the state
inspection list. He could have found things wrong if he tried. Hard not
to in any old car.

By the way, he did not even charge me for the little test they did, the
presure test. Even if a mean, low-down dealer can feel a human impulse,
maybe you could some day? Try it. You may like it. You can always go
back and get your old eeprom. I had a Toyota dealer not want to work on
an old Toyota but the particular bum of the service manager, the green
team (as opposed to the white or blue team there) charged me $90 to
tell me. So this Chrysler dealer was far and away extremely honest
about not charging me any money as compared to the Toyota dealer. Well,
the Toyota dealer or rather that green team service manager was just
plain wrong. He said my little Toyota which got 37 mpg was going to
self-destruct. It did, about 60,000 miles later. Not bad for an old car
I bought for $400.

My, my, my, aren't you being sarcastic, or is that ironic or sardonic.
In any case, this dealer is one in a million, hyperbole aside, in three
years he has charged me less than others. My finding his discount
coupons helped this.

I think the above is an ad hominem argument. But it's true. Most of my
brain, unlike yours, is connected to auditory fibers. I'm built like an
owl, all ears and eyes. It's a genetic defect and so kind of you to
point that out. As always, I try to enjoy your innate hostility. Why? I
think you put your anger into finding out all these facts that are
about cars. Myself, I'm into brains and minicolumns and things like
that. I am stupid with cars because I prefer other difficult problems
that I am familiar with. Cars are not my forte. If I could, I would
just walk or bike. Unfortunately that is not possible for some time.

I think you are so rude because deep down inside you care

I'll separate the wheat from your chaffing. Your suggestions are good.
Your delivery could use some polishing.

 

So did the Walmart SuperTech brand of coolant attack my gasket?
It apparently has the organic acids as par for 5 year coolants.
What do you wizards say?

 

Actually, your both right. And I don't think Dan is angry since this is the
same advice he gives as do I, over and over again when this question comes
up.

Here is the lowdown. In a big city with lots of dealers that is very
competitive
the dealerships make money doing 2 things - selling cars, and doing warranty
work
that they stick the factory for. As a result the mechanics work all day
long on
2-3 year old vehicles. They hardly see a 5-10 year old vehicle and since
their
skill set is so rusty on the older vehicles, as Dan says they really don't
want to
have to spend all the time to drag out the old service manuals and have to
remind themselves of all the old service procedures. Also in the big city
there's lots of independent mechanics and enough top-drawer customers
who use them, that there are a fair number of good independent mechanics
that won't gouge you and do good work.

In a small town it's different. Usually there's a single dealership and
they
only survive if they take a cradle-to-grave approach. If they start
screwing
people over then word gets around quicker than snot and they are sunk.

Since there's a lot more people in big cities, most people that post here
are from big cities and the big city advice applies most of the time.

OK. First of all, to update firmware in a trans computer takes a tool
that costs over $5,000. The dealers are required by the factory to have
this tool but I strongly doubt that any dealer that has purchased the
flash equipment has, in fact, ever broke even on it. Consider that for
either the local mechanic or the dealer, that it costs them about $25 for
the overhead of having a mechanic just to lift the lid and look at your
car engine for 5 minutes. They probably realized a profit of maybe
$10 on flashing your transmission. For a $5000 tool, well do you really
think a local mechanic is going to flash update 500 transmission computers
to break even on this tool? I certainly don't.

And as for the tranny shops, their standard MO is to take your trans
computer and send it out to a "remanufacturer" who ships them a
trans computer that's been cleaned up and flash-updated to the current
firmware. They don't flash-update trans computers. Even if they could
justify the expence, about 1 in 50 of those trans computers will probably
blow chunks in the middle of the flash update operation and become
scrambled, then the trans shop is out $300 for a new computer. While
the local dealer will simply ship stuff like that back to the factory
under a warranty claim and let the factory eat it - after all, it was the
factory bugs that required the computers to be flashed in the first place,
let them eat a new computer cost. The trans computer remanufacturers
don't care about stuff like this when it happens since they get piles
of computers from the local wreckers for real cheap.

So, you are putting way more stock in this trans computer update thing,
and are not aware of the economics of it.

Here's the thing on your engine. It's toasted.

If you have been driving around with coolant in the engine oil for more
than a few weeks, your rod and crank bearings are shot. Water does
not lubricate these bearings, water and oil mixed does not lube them, only
pure oil lubes them. That is why the dealer wants to sell you a
remanufactured
engine. They don't know how long the water has been in the engine oil
so they are going to rightly assume the worst.

At this point your cheapest honest alternative is to simply keep topping
it off with coolant and drive it until the engine seizes and tosses a rod
through the engine block. Then scrap it and buy another one, or get
a new engine. The wrecking yards are stuffed full of the 3.0 mitsubishi
engines that are perfectly usable as rebuildable cores, the wreckers
can't give them away, they are worth more as melted down iron than
as engine blocks. In fact, the wreckers also have a plentiful selection of
3.0 Mitsubishi engines that are still running, and simply swapping your
blown up engine with one from a wrecking yard is also a cheap alternative.

Of course, the cheapest dishonest alternative is to change the oil and
immediately sell the vehicle while it's still running and let someone else
deal with the problem. That is probably what most people in your situation
would do. It is underhanded, but on the other side of the coin if any
prospective used car buyer were to ask in any chrisler online forum if
the 3.0 Mitsubishi engine was an OK engine to have in a used vehicle they
would be told to run away, run away.

Ted

 

Once again you are completely ignoring common business practice.

The reason you didn't get charged for any of this is that the dealer knows
your engine is about ready to seize. If they do any significant work on it
and there's a paper trail, then a week from now if your engine seizes your
going to be back there claiming they "broke" your engine, waving around
the receipts from the last work they did. Then they are now in a situation
where if they don't give you some significant goodwill you could run
out of there and tell all your other idiot friends that they "broke" your
engine and now don't want to make good on it. Since you have the
paper bill showing that they did something, right before your engine
exploded, most mechanically inept
people would probably believe that the dealer caused your problem.

What the service writer wanted and the mechanic too, was a paper
trail showing that you came in, got inspected, and they touched nothing.
This gives you a green inspection card so when you go to sell your
vehicle you will be able to unload it. It gives them some deniability
since when the van explodes in the lap of the new buyer, if that person
would be dumb enough to come to the dealer and chew them out for
passing a van that was ready to blow up, they can say with perfect
seriousness "the state inspection laws don't tell us to check for water
in the oil and the owner didn't say anything about any problems, it's
not our fault that we passed a van that blew up a month later"

And, if you don't answer the clue phone, and are stupid,
and hang on to this vehicle, then when the engine does grenande, you
have nothing that you can carry back into their shop and use as leverage
to try to get a free engine out of them.

Naturally the dealer would probably prefer you sell this vehicle, so
that you will bring your next vehicle into them for service. They have
already told you you need a new engine, most people with a clue by
now would be figuring out how to sell it. If your clue phone rings you
will sell this vehicle now, while you still can get some money out of it,
thus not be pissed off at the dealer, and will then probably be bringing
in your next vehicle to them. The dealer knows all this and their
attempt to move out of the killing zone, and make it easy for you to
move out of the killing zone if you use your brain for a change, is
intended to keep you happy and coming back to them. That is good
business. They want your money, and they know if they make it difficult
or expensive for you to get rid of this van, that your going to end up
dumping all your money into tow bills and depreciation loss, and
have nothing left over to spend on them or on any of their used
vehicles they may have on their lot. Your money right now is tied up
in this van, they want you to liquify the van for as much money as
you can get, then bring the money to them. Duh!!!!!

Who in God's name takes a $400 car to ANY mechanic, dealership or
otherwise? $400 cars should only see the inside of 2 places: the
quickie lube, and your garage if you happen to be a car guy who
actually knows how to do significant vehicle service work. If you lost
$90 there well that was the "stupid" tax that they assess on stupid people
who don't understand that a $400 car for most people is like a big bag
of toilet paper, you just use it up until it's gone.

Look, right now you have 2 options, first is to sell your van for $2K
and buy another, or to drop $2K into a reman engine. The dealer
probably has $2-$3K minivans on the lot right now, and they certainly
have $2-$3K remanufactured engines available now. In other words
either choice you pick they stand to benefit by $2-$3K. Only a
really stupid dealer would scuttle that by nickel and diming you now.

So far your story has really only proven your dealer has some smart
horse sense. It does not prove that they will refrain from deflating your
wallet if they get the chance. If you do give them the chance to do that,
you will probably get an OK deal - you won't get the best deal in the
world, but you won't get screwed over - but they will definitely get your
money.

The US capitalist system is setup in a fashion to make greed benefit
both sides of a transaction. Greed is very reliable, you can always
count on the opposite party in a business transaction wanting more
money. The seller wants lots of money in exchange for his product,
the buyer wants to save lots of money in exchange for buying from
the seller. That is the stark truth of it. Smart sellers make sure their
buyers are sufficiently fat with money to bother with, smart buyers
make sure their sellers have something to offer in exchange for their
money. You are being rediculous when you are trying to aspire
the milk of human kindness to a business transaction - wake up and
smell the coffee, it's black!

Ted

 

wow replace it.! i red some O my god they like to write!!!

 

Thanks for all the detailed and logical info, certainly makes a lot of
sense, but this post, apparently later, seems to suggest the opposite
course of action of the first post, which is to unload the car before
it explodes, well, seizes.

What would you do? Would you sell a car that is about to self-destruct.
If you don't want to state publicly, an email might do. I'm curious. I
really do need the money since I can't afford the repairs. Interesting.
Will the screws make me sell myself out and behave like most others,
assuming most people would unload a bum car.

The owner before me could not sell this car to an unsuspecting buyer.
Her concerns turned out to be unfounded somewhat. She is also truthful.
The tranny was going to self-destruct again, but after a lot of
research, on this newsgroup and Allpar, I was avoid to prevent that
[TCM update] and did get 33,000 miles out of the tranny so far.

 

Today I saw a master mechanic. Surreal the difference between all these
people are a real life master mechanic.

He was not afraid to work on the engine but he was cautiously
optimistic.

But what would it have hurt to do a simple diagnosis, noninvasively
The master mechanic did not say he would have to tear down the engine
to get a feel for what is wrong.

Without even an appointment or any connections between us, this master
mechanic took out a penlight and a mirror as dentists used. He said in
this particular engine if the coolant had reached the bearings, they
would have been toast because there are not any anti-corrosion
protections on them.

But he could not find in his cursory analysis, any evidence of
condensation on the valve cover. This he did while standing in snow
outside in the parking lot. He then looked at the PCV valve and did
note with the mirror and light a noticeable white ring, like a bathtub
ring. This he said might be due to the coolant but he has seen it with
old cars without the coolant leak. In other words, it appears that the
coolant has not touched the bearings so maybe it is head gasket. Even
that though may be a major repair for me. And he also has seen the 5
year antifreeze toast head gaskets and cause various other problems.
And old coolant, even 2 years old, also harm the engine because it has
lost its anticorrosion properties. So maybe I did damage or hurry
things also by not changing the coolant, or rather, forgetting to
change after I decided to.

He knows these engines but first he wanted to check up, especially on
an engine with 200,000 miles on it. His place had an awful lot of cars
for repairs, very neat, and nice new cars.

So there is some slight hope. This particular mechanic also has a
reputation for truthfulness as well as competency. He can also explain
what he is doing. Very refreshing. I had forgotten about him until the
posts here. So I appreciate all the help. I just wish when you help
people in distress you don't say, heh, you're being dumb and stupid.
That doesn't help in the long run for asking advice. Not so much you,
Ted, but that other fellow I wish I could help out the mechanic as
he helped me just by being polite and considerate and unusually
intelligent and competent.