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Project car. Massive coolant leak and maybe an exhaust leak.
A little background.. I'm brand new to the corvette world as of 4/18/17.
I purchased a 1985 blue corvette. l98, auto trans. The previous owner had stated that the vehicle had been sitting for a while but it did pass
a VA inspection on 4/3/17. Anyways.. I get her home and start discovering problems.. Headlight gear is out on the passenger side(which I was aware of), massive coolant leak, and the exhaust system has seen better days... as well as all maintenance needs to be preformed.. I'm really not sure
how this vehicle passed a VA inspection, but w/e. Background on me..
I used to mess around with GM 3800 series engines, but nothing too
serious. I am very engine dumb but I really enjoy working on cars, so hence the 85 Vette. I was hoping to get some guidance on the coolant and exhaust leaks... any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Videos of the issues are below.
Congrats on the car - then again no one said it was going to be like a new one
Sorry - couldn't pass it up, we've all been there. On the coolant leak, here's a couple of thoughts. Get a pressure tester and pressurize the cooling system to about 15'. Start looking for your leak, listen too. Now if you have something like Prestone Yellow/Green antifreeze, it fluoresces under black light so that will help. You can also get dye to add to the coolant to make it even more pronounced. Went through that on my 86. Turned out the U shaped hose that goes between the block and TPI right over the water pump had a crack in it. Took care of both my coolant loss and leak with one hose.
Good luck. I'm sure you'll find it and get it taken care of.
Give it the good outside inspection to rule out the hoses and stuff, get the pressure tester like mentioned.
Take the A/C Resister block out pressurize the system and look thru the Hole and see if it's Coolant wet in there. you can also remove the A/C fan motor and get a good look inside. But First Impressions you need a heater core, And don't go cheap by throwing in some Fixes all Radiator Snake Oil Sealant it will just come back and bite you when you don't want it too.
The Exhaust leak I take it that was a shot of were the Muffler meets "Y" Pipe if so Now is the time to do the Exhaust upgrades if Budget allows, because that joint may be on it's way out, the little bitty hole is supposed to be there.
Thanks for the help! I found a way to test for a heater core leak... coolant on the passenger floorboard..so I checked the passenger floorboard and coolant everywhere !!! The seller had a nice thick aftermarket mat down so I had no idea it
was leaking until I removed it. From what everyone is saying is that it is going to be a royal
pain to fix, thankfully its only going to be about 100 bucks to fix myself, but im going to have to wait until next month for that... Already spent way too much on her this week
Last edited by Markever234; 04-20-2017 at 11:19 AM.
The leak is coming out of your air conditioning condenser housing. If it is cool and then it's not coming from the actual condenser. But the odd thing is the coolant would have to go up to get into your AC condenser housing box.
if I had to guess you have sprung a leak on the heater core wear either the inlet or Outlet goes into the core, or possibly just inside of the firewall on the nipples themselves. If you have sprung a leak within the heater core radiator, the fluid drops down and will end up accumulating on the foam pad of the passenger lower kick panel/trim panel. If you drop that panel which is just a few screws, you may find that this pad is soaked with coolant. Then you have your answer.
as for changing your heater core it's honestly not that bad. The most important thing is that you get a heater core that fits perfectly. Then it's just a matter of removing some bolts carefully on your back with some good light and a small quarter inch drive with multiple wobblies extensions ratchet set. It's not that bad. There is one crossmember that goes in on a diagonal that required the grinding down of a socket for me. That was the easiest way for me to do it. On this crossmember there are one bolt on either end of it and the upper one was inaccessible with the socket that was a regular length. It is the 13 mm. Here's a photograph of what I did so that I could undo it and do it up again.
looks like i missed ur note saying you had already done that.
swapping it isnt a big deal if you are in decent physical condition and have a set of basic tools.
plan on replacing the hoses. they are not the same size. use a blade and cut them off. they will be seized on. careful with the blade.
you should also unbolt the blower motor to ger in with a rag and moo up the coolant. this is done from the engine bay side. remove the passenger wheel well wall and getting to the blower motor will be easier.
use your iphone to take pictures over inside of the ac condensor box too. i jimmy righed a narrow hose onto my shopvac and sucked all the debris out through the nlower motor access.
lookup the "fastguy" method for swapping the heater core. i could do it in 2hrs now.
04-19-2017, 03:35 PM
Project car. Massive coolant leak and maybe an exhaust leak.
