Back Story: I put a 160* tstat in a couple days ago and wired a fan switch using shbox's instructions. Temp gauge has stayed at 180 or so.

I was sitting in the drive through at BK (two double cheeseburgers large fry and a large Dr pepper.. i was hungry ) got my food and left, i notice my temp gauge now says 200ish. I checked to see if my fan switch was turned on, which it was. wtf? I look at the oil pressure and it seems fine at idle but is a little low, like 35lbs maybe at 2K rpm when its normally at 40. (not sure how accurate stock gauge is) I drive back to work thinking i may just be paranoid and 200* didn't seem that bad since thats factory temp right? I go outside and check on the car later when it got cooler and find this..





yes thats oil.. I went to wallyworld (walmart) and bought a quart of oil and put it in the motor. I've ran the car since then with no issues at all just the same small oil leak i've always had.

any ideas?

 

not to insult your intelligence, but is your fan actually turning on? Did you tell the computer that there is a 160 thermo in there, or did you just put it in? The oil could be completly unrelated.

 

I shouldn't have to tell the computer there is 160* stat in there if i'm controlling my fans manually. Yes they are actually turning on . It stays at less than 180* it seems like it had a hickup or something. Car runs the same. I drove it around the neighborhood and let it idle in my garage and watched everything closely and everything seems fine.

 

Looks as though the coolant system was not bled properly after the t-stat install.

 

Yea, no offense, but I'm with SS on that one.

As for oil... who knows!

 

I bet there was a bunch of air in the coolant system, if so, you gotta burp that thing!

 

Was you using "high speed" or "low speed" when running the fans?.
Once the car has gotten around 200* the "low speed" won't pull it back down, but the "high speed" should.

Sara Lou

 

u sure thats oil and not just orange coolant? could of burped and came out the overflow...

 

That's a big oil leak.. I will say this though: On my friend's 95 Z28, her thermostat got stuck and she was running hot, over 200 on the freeway. She had already had a slow leak from the intake manifold, which when the oil got hotter fom the thermostat problem, started leaking a LOT faster, almost as much as what you are having there. I think the oil gets a lot thinner at those temps and starts running through the leak point(s) a LOT faster. We fixed her stat and got the temps back down and the leak went back to a very slow trickle for a few months until we did the intake manifold fix.

 

What brand thermostat did you go with?

 

I wired it via shbox's insructions, so they both come on when the switch is "on"

Hypertech

 

i thought it might have been but it didn't smell like coolant and was brown not orange

 

this exact same thing happened to me a while back as well, i was driving stopped at circle k temps were about 200, then i went into driving class came back out and it was the exact same thing, that time i got a new opti and water pump and t-stat and a tune and it fixed that problem right up. plus i have recently gotten a brand new factory replacement radiator that is also working well.

 

ok, two things. First off, I was not trying to insult you when I made the first suggestion. Sometimes even the most experienced and knowledgable gearhead makes a rookie mistake every once in a while, especially with the simple stuff, when you aren't really paying attention because it is so simple.

As for it possibly being coolant, DexCool can turn brown for two reasons. One is just age. The other is mixing DexCool and the green stuff, which will make it brown and goopy. You probably didn't do it, if you ever took it to Jiffy Lube or someone to change your oil, they might have topped off the fluid and not even told you. A Pontiac dealer's mechanic did it to my Camaro. Just some thoughts.

 

What year did they start using the dexcool?

 

By the looks of that mess, it seems to be coolant, if it was oil, thats a "**** load" of oil to be looseing on a short shutdown, i'm leaning towards coolant because it was running hotter then normal, i would be checking the thermostat houseing for leaks sence you just messed with it, i also run the hypertech 160* stat & have my fans manually operated, it stays around 175-180* with the fans on with the stock tune, you really should have run your finger on that fluid too make sure what it was that was leaking, not just guessing, lift the car up & check underneath & see what it is exactly thats leaking, i'm sure there are signs of it all under there. & yes, you need to bleed the system of all air with those burp valves & also run the heater too.

 

Just be careful with the Hypertech, I had one fail closed. A blown head gasket later........

 

thats what i used to walk out to everyday almost after driving my car in the hot az heat. The shitty *** dexacool gunked up my entire system and i had to completely flush it all out. Now im running the green coolant and everything is great. From the pic though it looks just like the nasty dexacool i used to have in my car. Flush that **** out and go with the green.

 

I didn't take it as an insult bud, its cool I posted for help and you are doing exactly that. I appreciate any help I can get since my papi is 600 miles away.

I'm pretty sure it was coolant and it might have mixed with oil or grease when it leaked out because I just changed my radiator and fluid within 6 months ago. Opti was professionaly replaced a little over a year ago.. 1100 dollars later Won't do that again.

I just burped the valves today and tightened the bolts on the thermostat housing and one of them broke I'm going to go ahead and get a new radiator cap while i'm at the store.

this confirms that it was coolant. lol I'm paranoid about this damn car..

 

I'm gonna pull it and test it when I get back from the store with a screw to replace the one I broke