BamaBird22

I lost my drive belt yesterday right by autozone so I went in and got a new one and popped it on and went on my way, only to find out that after maybe 3 miles, white smoke starts bellowing out from under the hood and my temp. Gauge jumps to 280.

So I stop, wait for it to cool down then get up to speed and then turned the car off and coasted home. I start to fill the radiator with water and I notice that is coming out just as fast as I'm putting it in, and the leak seems like it's coming right under the upper intake plenum. Any ideas guys?

SparkyJJO

iTrader: (11)

Something had to have caused the belt to be thrown.

Did you check your water pump? Is it locked up? Leaking from there?

Heater hoses come out the side, off the tensioner assembly (yeah, a bit weird). There are plastic elbows that go into the block on the other end. Are those still intact? Not uncommon for the plastic to get brittle and break.

Daniel Richards

iTrader: (1)

which v6? on the 3.8 the water pump is about 6-8 inches directly below the throttle body upper intake and the pouring out of fluid sounds much like what happened to me on my dads old Suburban when the water pump blew out, for me it happened right as I parked the car so I never overheated.

jrpimp00

iTrader: (17)

OP, Pics would help a lot

BamaBird22

Okay. I don't know why the belt came off. Water pump isn't locked up. But the plastic elbows are broken, well, the one right underneath the intake is. Had to remove the alternator and a bracket right underneath the altenator to get to the plastic pieces.

BamaBird22

On the side of bracket


underneath intake

Majestic9C1

iTrader: (19)

v6fixit.com has a kit that replaces the shitty OEM heater hose setup with an updated design

also get the upgraded aluminum coolant elbows from Dorman and not worry again about the plastic ones breaking..

SparkyJJO

iTrader: (11)

Yep that would do it. Stupid plastic elbows.

I should probably replace mine when it won't be an inconvenience.

BamaBird22

Yea, lucky for me I was right by auto zone and less than 5 miles from home. Otherwise it would've been a huge in convenience. All in all its a pretty easy job. Here's a link of a guy I found on YouTube if anyone is interested.

http://youtu.be/g6mivXV6gRU

Stan1911

Good info will be checking ours in the near future.

unixken

I had one of the plastic elbows suffer catastrophic failure on the highway, in my '04 Bonneville. It's amazing how fast the car can dump two and a half gallons of fluid under pressure, at 70 MPH. Definitely replace with the aluminum version.