2000 grand marquis-coolant pooled in valley behind water pump injectors sparking
Everything was running great on this car until about 11 days ago ( except a dropped
ball joint). I changed the water pump 7 days ago after the car began running hot- I also
flushed and drained the colling system after I replaced the water pump. The car was
running rough after the watre pump replacement- then on Monday I noticed my a/c
wasn't blowing cold at all. It is 100 degrees here and I need a/c. I changed the blower
motor on Tuesday night. Tested it out and everything seemed fine. The next day I drove
about 2 miles to a friend's pool. The car was parked outside in the heat for about an
hour. I got in and after about a mile of driving my temp gauge JUMPED and the car
started sputtering- I got it home fast at this point I heard a sizzling sound and a kind of
a whooshing sound as well. I opened the hood and saw 2 of my fuel injectors sparking
and noticed a pool of coolant in the valley behind my water pump. Once the car cooled
off I shop vacced the pool of coolant and saw that under the manifold there still was a
bit of coolant. Spent hours online and diagnosed it as manifold. I checked the oil and it
is still nice and black so no leaking into the block- also once it got hot ( 3 times in a
week)I drove less than 1 mile until I could stop, turned the heater on, and once the car
had cooled down I instantly refilled the coolant. So I was losing coolant but no visible
coolant pooled under vehicle and there has been a sweet radiator smell as I idle for the
past 11 days.
I started taking everything apart yesterday to replace the intake manifold. Looks like it
was swapped from the initial plastic design at some point aluminum at the thermostat
housing but the rest is still a plastic piece of junk. The coolant pools at the rear valley
and i saw a drip from a rear gasket on the manifold. Could it just be the gaskets or
should I swap entire manifold? Will there be obvious cracks in the plastic when I get it
out? Since I have no idea when the manifold was replaced and the car has 176,700
miles on it should I just be safe rather than sorry and replace the manifold- I am kind of
thinking maybe it would be smarter to seal this one up, drive the car very infrequently
and buy an aliminum manifold when I can afford it.
Any thoughts or advice? I just started learning how to repair my own car and I can't
afford shop prices. My x bf helps but he doesn't know much about this model yet he is
pretty mechanically inclined and when we work as a team we can figure out most of the
instructions for any repair.
Thanks
