Daniel76

iTrader: (2)

Gents,
Just discovered oil in my son's 2001 SS radiator. Looks like probably a head gasket at a minimum. That's assuming the heads aren't cracked, so we'll have to have them looked at to make sure...

Best choice at this point assuming he'd like to keep the car for 3-4 more years as a daily driver...

1. Reman/crate engine...guessing about $5-6k for complete motor swap.

2. Repair the current motor (131,000 miles...has not had an easy life)...about a $3500 bill from my current mech to check the heads, head gaskets, water pump, hoses, flush, labor, etc.

3. Have a line on a 5.7 from a 2002 Camaro SS with 56,000 miles on it. Will be about $5k for a complete swap...

Been a long time since I've had to get this far into a repair and my son would like to keep the car until he's out of college.

Thanks for any thoughts...

LS1MCSS

iTrader: (18)

"about a $3500 bill from my current mech to check the heads, head gaskets, water pump, hoses, flush, labor, etc". Sounds like you should find a new mechanic. I couldn't sleep at night if I charged prices like that.

wildcamaro

iTrader: (15)

Yea that mechanic must use gold wrenches...$1000 for that would be too much...all he has to do is pull heads and change head gaskets and flush the cooling system...that's like $200 in parts at best...I'd look for someone else

redbird555

iTrader: (14)

Are you sure its not the power steering cooler? Its very common for the ps cooler to rupture inside and leak steering fluid into the rad. it looks similar to engine oil and is much more common than a blown head gasket

Daniel76

iTrader: (2)

Question: should I just assume the heads are OK? Because a significant chunk of that bill is for the heads to go over and get checked and make sure they're not cracked. If the heads are OK, you're probably right...a $1k bill is reasonable. Would you guarantee the work if you didn't know if you may have a cracked head? Wish I knew more about this...

Daniel76

iTrader: (2)

Good question...how would I know the difference?...the mech I talked to was convinced it was oil, and had been like that a while because the hoses looked to be oil soaked.

dr_whigham

iTrader: (49)

Open the power steering reservoir and look to see if its milky inside. If so, it's the power steering cooler that's inline on the top radiator hose. I ditched that a long time ago for the sake of my motor and my pump.

sjsingle1

iTrader: (1)

3500$ ? WTF !!! the reason i do 99% of all my own work

KCS

iTrader: (20)

I can say pretty confidently that the heads are fine. If it is engine oil mixing with the coolant, it's much more likely to be a cracked sleeve than a cracked cylinder head. A competent technician should be able to accurately diagnose it out in less than an hour.

96capricemgr

iTrader: (1)

Stop and ask yourself where pressurized oil can get to the coolant? THEN stop to consider oil and PS fluid and tranny fluid are all only under pressure while the engine runs BUT the coolant stays pressurized till it has cooled a fair bit so as others have said look for the other end of the contamination, likely the PS resivoir will show signs.

The answer is pretty much in radiator coolers of some sort, various vehicles can have engine oil coolers there, or PS as these guys are trying to tell you, and tranny coolers are extremely common in radiators, don't think I have ever worked on an automatic tranny car that didn't have a cooler in the radiator.

Daniel76

iTrader: (2)

I went and spoke to my other mechanic and he said the same thing...that if the head were cracked or there was a head gasket issue, it likely would like be overheating and running like ****. He believes it is also an oil cooler issue, and that that is much more common.

He said they have a dye they can run through the radiator and if there is any exhaust leakage out of the heads it will change the color of the dye (I hope I'm paraphrasing him correctly).

Why do I have two mechanics? Cause the second guy does great work, but takes forever to fix my car...the first guy always does really good work, but is more expensive...

If I had the time for my car to sit in the shop for a week at a time I'd always take it to the second guy.

Thanks again for all of the input fellas. It really helped me when I started trying to understand this issue.