Have a chance to get a nice 01 base model cavalier for cheap. It starts up and runs good, but has water droplets coming from the tailpipe at idle and the exhaust kinda of smells sweet like coolant. I also noticed that the temp gauge went slightly past the half mark when idling, but on the test drive it went back down to the half mark. Never saw or heard the cooling fan turn on when I was checking it out. No cel or anything and runs real good. Would this more than likely be head gasket issue or would it be a cracked head or something like that ? Worth buying and fixing ? It's an 01 with 143,000 miles. No oil leaks and oil looks alright, no signs of coolant in the oil.
water coming out the tailpipe means the catalytic converter is working properly.
part of the chemical reaction that occurs is that harmful emissions are turned into water.
sweet smelling exhaust might be in your head. if it's burning coolant, you'd have grey smoke out the tailpipe.
the engine will get warm when sitting still. airflow across the radiator cools things off (like when you're moving)
the GM setpoint for fan activation is 225degrees... way too hot IMO (which is why the needle was so high before it cooled off)
sounds like it's running fine to me.
The coolant recovery tank looks really watered down and slightly dirty. It's mostly water. Are these engines known to have leaky intake gaskets like the 3800 v6 ? I had one that drank coolant and sometimes smelled sweet when running. Ended up being leaky LIM gaskets.
There is no coolant in the intake to be leaking.
Have a nice day.
The water droplets are the damndest thing because I had a chance to perform a compression test and got 165 on all cylinders. Ran a block test and the solution did not turn green, so no combustion gasses in the cooling system. I let it idle for about 20 minutes and the water droplets just kept coming out of the muffler. Could it be a cracked head ?
ld9z24 wrote:The water droplets are the damndest thing because I had a chance to perform a compression test and got 165 on all cylinders. Ran a block test and the solution did not turn green, so no combustion gasses in the cooling system. I let it idle for about 20 minutes and the water droplets just kept coming out of the muffler. Could it be a cracked head ?
Every gallon of gasoline produces a gallon of water with the burning process. It is normal to have some condensation out the tailpipe until the EXHAUST system is completely warmed up. Otherwise the water in the exhaust can condense prior to reaching the outlet. If the coolant level is not going down then the head/block/gasket is probably good.
dennis
ld9z24 wrote:The water droplets are the damndest thing because I had a chance to perform a compression test and got 165 on all cylinders. Ran a block test and the solution did not turn green, so no combustion gasses in the cooling system. I let it idle for about 20 minutes and the water droplets just kept coming out of the muffler. Could it be a cracked head ?
no. as pj said, it is completely normal for water to drip out the exhaust.
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I guess it worries me because I had a corsica with the 3.1 v6 that did the same thing and it eventually just stopped and locked up one day while driving and it was not low on oil.
ld9z24 wrote:I guess it worries me because I had a corsica with the 3.1 v6 that did the same thing and it eventually just stopped and locked up one day while driving and it was not low on oil.
your corsica had different issues. ALL cars with a proper catalytic converter will do this. its how the catalyst system works.
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