Princess being swayed toward the dark side

[kashmir]

The GX470 started smoking and then shut down on the road a couple days ago. Now she is going around telling relatives that she wishes she had gotten the jeep, because she never had problems like this in the wrangler (or the saturn vue, yuck)

Apparently the radiator leaked. Now there is a sloshing liquid noise that has them puzzled - from googling seems like probably air pockets on the coolant fill - starting to worry that these guys are clueless.

Ugh.

Very embarassing to be stranded on the side of the road in a toyota, usually I'm driving by euro cars broken down like that.

 

[RCsGX]

A lot of guys replaced their OEM radiators with this one:
KoyoRad, Part # A2690
http://koyorad.com/

 

[kashmir]

Yeah, I requested that one on her behalf, but they already had one oem in progress (same source, right?)

thx though

check engine light is on again, i guess i better get up to speed on obd1...

 

[RCsGX]

check engine light is on again, i guess i better get up to speed on obd1...

Hopefully it's just your gas cap.

Attached is a PDF w/ the codes....

 

[IanB]

Yeah, I requested that one on her behalf, but they already had one oem in progress (same source, right?)

thx though

check engine light is on again, i guess i better get up to speed on obd1...

I'd concentrate on OBD2 if I were you, everything '96+ uses OBD2.

 

[kashmir]

yeah, thx, luckily i caught that before i ordered the plugin blutooth obd - it will be cool to see it on the smartphones. eventually i'll get the scangauge

 

[kashmir]

Oh man, it just gets better. Mechanic trying to trouble shoot this persistent OBD overheating code. He thinks it is a blown head gasket. He says they detected exhaust in the radiator area. I wonder if they needlessly replaced the radiator. At first they suspected the water pump which they replaced opportunistically (and timing belt.)

To deal with the head gasket:
$2800 Ugh

Obviously going somewhere else for a 2nd opinion. I don't see anyone else really having this problem. And it seems like there should be other symptoms like coolant in the oil.

 

[GXO]

If you have exhaust gases in the radiator you should be able to see oil in there as well as the coolant in the oil pan.

 

[IanB]

If you have exhaust gases in the radiator you should be able to see oil in there as well as the coolant in the oil pan.

Head gaskets are funny things, they don't always fail the same way. You could be burning coolant, but not getting oil in the coolant and coolant in the oil for example. Often you'll get a white buildup on the inside of the oil cap if coolant is mixing with the oil, so I'd have a quick peek there as well. A compression test and leakdown test are really good ways to determine if you've blown a headgasket.

 

[kashmir]

That's one thing that kind of discourages me about this first mechanic. Although they don't seem slimy, I'm just wondering how good they are. They think it's the headgasket because of what they found using some emission detector (my paraphrase) - I would have thought they'd have more direct tests, like the ones you mentioned.

Is it really $2800 ballpark for that kind of repair? Mostly labor I assume?

Anything else that can be done for PM or upgrade that makes sense while everything is apart. Do vehicles with replaced headgaskets tend to give further reliability problems down the road?

Ugh, starting to feel like I bought a landrover.

Thanks for the info though guys...