Well my inclination goes as far as changing the oil air filter/intake and maybe some decent brake work. Some basics about changing the spark plugs

my dad knows a little more, alternator, spark plugs, belt and more of those smaller tasks. We might be able to do it ourselves but i dont know if i would trust myself.

Either way I'm gonna go rent or buy one of those hydrocarbon tests tomorrow and try that. And i have a friend with a compression tester. So we'll see what happens.

I'm hoping its not the head gasket but we'll see i guess. worst comes worst 1200 bucks are gonna be spent.

 

i think you and your dad could do it with the instructions from the manual... it would save you 1000 bucks if you do it yourself... and hey if you end up not being able to figure it out you can always take it to the shop, give them the part you purchased and have them do it... but whichever your more comfortable with... but yeah good idea doing the tests for compression and hydrocarbons

 

I'm gonna pick up the hydro carbon test today. Most likely I'll do it myself. A shop charges the same as the cost of the kit. and I'm still waiting to hear back from my friend Adam. he's a somewhat busy guy but he knows how to work on cars. And he's offered to help me. So hopefully it all works out.

 

The low mileage may be a good thing, but regardless of the miles it has on it, the radiator is still 10 years old. That's a long time for gunk to clog up the cooling tubes.

 

doesn't mean that that is the problem though.. i still have the original in mine... its almost 13 years old...

 

OK so i just picked up both the radiator pressure test and the blue chemical hydrocarbon test to check for exhaust gases in the cooling system.

I ran the pressure test and this is how i did it.

I had the radiator cap off started the car. which was cold from sitting over night.

than after 2-4 mins after running i screwed the pressure test cap onto where the radiator cap goes and pumped it up to 21 psi which is whats written on the original cap.

After a good 30 secs or so i noticed that the pressure was slowly going up. And the kit said to watch for pressure going down.

It said "if RAPID increase of pressure release the pressure as stated and remove the pressure tester. pressure RAPIDLY increasing means a bad gasket. replace head gasket"

My increase wasn't what I CONSIDER rapid but it went up nonetheless.

What do you guys think? Anything wrong with my procedure or maybe something else?

I really hope its not a head gasket and maybe there isn't something wrong with the head gasket yet but its getting worse. idk I'm worrying now.

 

do the hydrocarbon test and give us the results

pressure in the cooling system will go up as the engine warms up that is normal

 

Right, as you said sharp pressure will go up. As the guy at Autozone Said.

Ok so i ran the hydrocarbon test and nothing I started at roughly 7:11pm my time here and ran it until 7:16pm.

It recommends running the test for 2 minutes. But through it all the liquid stayed blue. towards the end when pressure built up i think i got some coolant into the blue test chemical but by that point i had run the test long enough.

So Hydrocarbon test was good. passed that, right?

And pressure build up is normal so the needle on the pressure valve was acting just right. not sporadic nor was it decreasing.

So what do you guys think? I'm still kind of hoping the coolant system was never burped right. when my dad did it the first time he only did it once.

And when i got it professionally flushed the guy didn't seem to know what he was doing either.

I bought prestone green any make model and color coolant 50/50 mix. Now me and my dad are going to top off the coolant and burp the system a good couple (2-4) times with heat on right? and see how she acts after that.

If anyone has any other thoughts though feel free to mention them. Maybe i did the test wrong maybe something else is possible. I'm not sure.

But let me say I really appreciate the help guys. Could not have done this without your knowledge and expertise. I've learned a lot about my car talking to you guys.

 

With the hydrocarbon test, for best results, I found that you make sure its fully shoved in, and when the temp is in the middle of the temp gauge, you start to suck in the air while raising the RPMs to like, 1500 or so. You also shouldn't get any coolant in there, so if possible, suck some out with a turkey baster or something.

BTW, here's a good video showing how to do this properly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA7KVQq9vKA

 

I got it up to and past the 1/4 mark it was close to if not at 1/2 when i began testing and thats exactly what i did. i used a turkey baster to drain some coolant out. And I've actually seen this exact video a couple times today and yesterday lol