Wow. You possibly have the worst luck in cars. Sorry to hear that. Time to sell all your under $5000 cars and buy the best, cleanest E36/46 M3 you can find. 
Wow. You possibly have the worst luck in cars. Sorry to hear that. Time to sell all your under $5000 cars and buy the best, cleanest E36/46 M3 you can find.
docwyte wrote: Wow. You possibly have the worst luck in cars. Sorry to hear that.
It's a gift. Mostly one that we never got a receipt for and can't return...
docwyte wrote: Time to sell all your under $5000 cars and buy the best, cleanest E36/46 M3 you can find.
Well, other than the truck which I want to keep - I only have one car that falls into this category, and that's the RX8.
Not sure when I'll find the time to look at it, but the current plan is to top up the expansion tank to the correct level and take it for a longer drive to see if it still uses coolant. It took me a while to burp the system so the low level might still be caused by the remaining air burping out of the system.
Might be wishful thinking, though.
Lift the car as high as you can and pressure test the system under some vague hope its something plastic?
Hope the best for you!
I'll give it a try. The problem is that the leak is pretty subtle (if there is one at all) - we're talking 1/2qt in 600 miles, after all. I'll top up the coolant this weekend and see if the weather allows for a longer drive. Got to establish first if it's really consistently losing coolant. If it's a seal it'll get worse over time.
Re something plastic, I've already eliminated most, if not all plastic parts from the cooling system. If I'm lucky it's something like the water pump, which may still be the original.
BoxheadTim wrote: I'll give it a try. The problem is that the leak is pretty subtle (if there is one at all) - we're talking 1/2qt in 600 miles, after all. I'll top up the coolant this weekend and see if the weather allows for a longer drive. Got to establish first if it's really consistently losing coolant. If it's a seal it'll get worse over time. Re something plastic, I've already eliminated most, if not all plastic parts from the cooling system. If I'm lucky it's something like the water pump, which may still be the original.
They do have to work harder then most other water pumps so I think you would be going in the right direction. How's the oil look/smell?
Those plastic coolant tanks are known to crack with age, typically on the bottom of the tank.
The coolant level sensors are also known to be faulty. Hopefully it's 1 of these 2 easy to fix items.
It's already got a nice shiny aluminum AST with a separate header tank for the exact reasons you mentioned 
.
I did some digging yesterday and couldn't find any obvious coolant leaks. Water pump is dry, too, and doesn't show any signs of failure. However, I found some odd deposits in the AST:
Those are hard, almost crystalline deposits. Almost like the deposits we get from the hard water here, but I mix my coolant using distilled water. My current working theory is that the PO dumped some Bars Leaks or similar into the coolant system to try and fix the leaky plastic radiator tank.
Anyway, I did charge the battery before firing it up again and it was running fine. I ended up topping up the expansion tank and let it sit idling for a while on our inclined driveway, then took it for a drive. Everything seems to be fine, it pulls fine to the redline and doesn't seem to down on power or pushing tell tale white smoke out the exhaust. I did notice that even after I returned from the test drive it was still burping air bubbles into the expansion tank, so I let it idle until it stopped doing that. If I'm very picky there might be a little more sideways movement of the engine at idle, but that might either be low-ish compression or worn engine mounts.
So far so inconclusive 
. I'll probably run the car to the airport a few times over the next few weeks and see if it's still using/losing coolant.
'rent' (or buy) a cooling system / radiator pressure tester from you local auto parts store and use it to look for a leak in the cooling system. Could be something simple like a tired hose clamp.
Re-tightenging the hose clamps seems to have helped, all those months ago.
Unfortunately it's now developed a whole bunch of other problems from standing around (couldn't drive it for a while thanks to lack of time and the achilles tendonitis) and is suffering from a veritable Volkswagen of warning lights.
Main issue appears to be a rodent that fancied itself an electrical engineer:
That's the wiring to the MAF sensor .
The above should be fixable, but there's also a battery warning light that seems to be perma-on despite a new battery, so that's not looking good. It might be time to say goodbye to this car...
Tim, my heart honestly aches over all the perpetual vehicular maladies you encounter. Serious question given your search for a new DD - have you ever considered doing a long-term rental from Enterprise or the like? You can swap it in for a different vehicle/make/model whenever you like, and there's generally unlimited mileage. I don't think it would be much more expensive than a typical lease, although you wouldn't be in anything too high-end. Seems like it may be worth it for the peace of mind though.
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