'94 Buick with Coolant Contamination

[Tim_Siford]

My Wife's grandfather (85yrs old) drives a '94 Buick LeSabre with the 3.8L V-6. He's been losing coolant. He had a mechanic look at it and the mechanic couldn't find a problem. I looked it over and could find no external coolant leak. Naturally, my first course of business was to tell him to collect some oil into a Blackstone bottle I gave him

I sent it away noting that he was losing coolant ...

Here is the report:
http://www.bescaredracing.com/misc/94buick.jpg

Potassium is pretty high showing that coolant is getting into the motor. I'm a little cornfused as to why Blackstone didn't list a percentage for the Coolant in the oil and just said POSitive. But, I guess that's not too important.

He's definitely going to get this repaired - no matter what the problem is. He really likes the car. My first instinct is a head gasket. However, I guess it could be an intake manifold leak (but this is rare for the coolant to breach the port and traverse down to the oil galley).

I want to try to save him as much money as possible since he doesn't have a lot of expendable cashflow. Any ideas (besides me doing the work

). I think it's pretty cut and dry but figured I would post here because I can't think of everything and because I don't know the 3.8L V-6 that well.

 

[Quest]

Tim,

Other than spending some time pulling off the cylinder heads and replacing the old head gasket with new ones (check the deck/head mating surface for flatness BTW), there is little you can do to eradicate this problem.

Granted you are mechanically-competent, you can spend some serious shopping for a good manuals for this car (I bet Chiltons must have one, forget about Haynes). Get all the necessary replacement parts and just perform the repair over a couple of days.

As far as Blackstone analysis's concern, it's in their position to analyse what's in the oil basis on what they find, and not in terms of percentage (afterall, percentage is meaningless in some case). Just go with what needs to be done, get over with it and be happy.

 

[Tim_Siford]

Thanks Quest,

Replacing the head gaskets is definitely within my ability. However, time constraints aren't. I just can't do this for him at this point even though I really would like to

Thanks again.

 

[M3 Mitch]

OK, in the immortal words of Karl Malden, "What are you going to do?" I have not done this exact job but in general head gasket replacement is not all that time consuming. If you don't DIY, then find a good shop with a reputation for quality.

Have the heads pressure tested while they are off the engine, BTW, they could be cracked. You might as well put in new valve seals at the same time.

Meantime you might consider very frequent oil changes - like every 1000 miles - if the car has to remain in service until you fix it. If you are in a non-freezing area maybe run water with a corrosion inhibitor only. Don't go freeze and crack your block, though!! Glycol is about the worst thing to get into oil...

 

[JohnBrowning]

Is his upper intake manifole made out of plastic? If it is then he has the now classic coolant leaking from upper intake manifold into his engine.