Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
The safety (of hardware) upgrade I’d like to get into is somehow giving the temperature gauge and the coolant level warning light audible alarm components. I miraculously saw the coolant idiot light flicker on back in October ‘19 when my SDL blew its radiator.
Not sure if that incident caused my crisis last Feb.when I perhaps experienced a cracked head. After a while you don’t glance at the gauges every minute. A loud audible alarm could prompt you to shut the engine off before the danger zones are reached.
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Yeah, coolant level light is easy, just add a buzzer to the light. With gauge you need more work.
I had a loose aux pump hose and dropped my coolant on highway, fortunately noticed it the moment the light came on, temp rose only to 115, I pulled up on the shoulder and waited for AAA. In the meantime, I found the hose, tightened it and ironically, it was 2 miles from walmart where I could've gotten some coolant or distilled water.
Then I checked the cooling system again with pressure, exhaust fume detection fluid and IR temperature gun. Replaced radiator and water pump. No issues found, although my radiator is now a bit smaller (used to have the 606 one) and city driving in 90-100F ambient results in 85-90C engine temp, which is still perfectly normal. Head measures 92-95C. I wonder if an electric fan instead of visco would quiet it down a bit and keep temps lower, for better AC efficiency. Best would be to keep the aux pump running after engine shut off for another 10min to avoid coolant temp spike. If you run city errands on a hot day, you come back to your car after a few minutes to see the engine temp at 95C and AC totally sucks.
87tdwagen: interesting point about oil catch can. I had it too for a bit. I did lose a quart every 4-5k miles, I had a light white smoke on idle, not much though. I ran LM engine flush for 10min before last oil change and for the past few months, I have zero smoke from exhaust. Did good 2k miles and oil level is approx the same.