My truck smells - coolant problem!

From : jmc

Q: so theres a couple of questions here the dealership is a couple of miles away. should i put in tap water to ensure the truck gets there or will it be ok if the radiator itself is full youre fine to drive it there. was the hot coolant landing on hot engine parts what caused the burning rubber smell if not what should i be looking at most likely - although coolant itself usually has a sweet smell to it. will the coolant damage said parts nah - just spray it down with the hose. stay away from and/or plug the air intake dont want to be spraying water in there. iirc youve got a big tube that goes into the right-side fender so you shouldnt have a problem here. .

Replies:

From : jmc

mike simmons wrote on the lot. maybe i should have asked. but if the dealer never changed it either then the coolant would have been in the truck for over 5 years!!! oh my! yep. not good for any coolant imo but especially not the green stuff... but still why did it happen again a second time right now at 64000 mi on aug 29 2006 i hope this make sense. because the damage was done already. even if the new coolant stopped the corrosion on that core plug the heat/cool cycles on an already-corroded plug will eventually wear it out. if i were you id replace all the core plugs but first id do a thorough cooling system flush i suspect that when the first plug was changed they simply dropped the coolant and replenished it. this will help to clean out all the crud that im sure is floating around the coolant passages. as far as replacing the rest of the plugs if two failed - you can expect more. its a hard lesson to learn but this is why people stress regular coolant flush/changes.... even on the supposed 5-year 100000 mile coolant. while the new coolant does hold up longer im not willing to believe it lasts that long. i just flushed mine 03 ctd at 60k and the flush water came out nice and clean the first time - but still piece of mind is worth a couple of dollars in coolant and some time amen tom! i too have an 03 ctd and even though it has the 5 year/100k hoat coolant i will be changing mine shortly too at 60k miles. in frequent cooling system service can be expensive to repair and as you surmised i suspect there was still a lot of residual corrosion in the ops cooling system which caused the 2nd failure so soon. i probably see two or three vehicles a week with premature cooling system failures and sadly this problem can be easily and cheaply avoided. mike . thank you all! i now have a good picture on what occurred its not just the mileage...its the time as well thats equally important. even though my truck was at 42k miles it was also 5 years old without a coolant flush. if the dealer never changed the coolant when i bought it in oct 2002 with 15k miles and i never did a coolant flush until the core plugs failed in mar 2005 at 42k miles then it was way overdue by the time factor. i will take it to get flushed more often maybe every 6 months to be sure the cooling system is clean. now i worry about my radiator. -js .

From : tom lawrence

btw i did not almost cost him anything because i qualified what torque values were for. youd really make a terrible teacher. the op didnt know the name of part he was asking about and you come back with 101 ft. lbs. for flywheel bolt. now if he didnt know that the pump was a pump wouldnt it be reasonable to assume that he could think you were telling him the plate he was asking about was a flywheel and then proceed to try and torque the bolts to 101 ft. lbs. thereby tearing the aluminum threads right out of the case not to mention the fact that 101 ft. lbs. is completely off the mark too. my service manual calls for 55 ft. lbs. for the flexplate-to-crankshaft bolts and 35 ft.lbs. for the flexplate-to-converter bolts. what did you do add them together and add a little bit for good measure .