98 Bonnie SE revisiting UIM issue after 9 months?

[bonniebird]

Hi, it's Melanie again - joined back in Feb of this year when I had the dreaded white smoke awesome help we did the UIM/LIM job..and we did all the upgrades, no cutting corners...has been great except there was a pesky minute leak that we thought was the radiator on the bottom where you tighten it...everytime we would park there would be a little circle of coolant - in the last few weeks it got to be you could see the trail of coolant drips where you pulled into the parking space along with the little puddle...we always kept an eye on the overflow and probably filled to the line once every other drive....had to get towed home the other nite since the car died on freeway...get it home to find the battery dead and tow driver put the computer on it and misfire in #6....also the temp had gotten up to 240 before the car died....I bought a new battery and alternator 2 days ago but it looks like we have more than that to deal with - when hubby took off the intake air filter it was all wet as well as where the air filter meets up with the engine....raining today so we can't take off the uim yet to inspect - probably do that tomorrow and then we'll have better symptoms to troubleshoot with... the concern is that it seems like somehow we did not take care of the original problem and also when we did the uim/lim job in Feb everything looked really good almost new and it already had the upgraded lim gasket - but we replaced it all again...and it seemed to take care of the problem..."seemed" to...hmmmm...just thinking out loud here for now but will have better info when the rain dissipates...Thanks guys for listening..

Melanie

[nos4blood70]

Sounds like the UIM melted again. You can plug the coolant ports in the lower intake and never have this issue again. I've had this done for the past two years with no problems.

http://www.grandprixforums.net/threads/ ... -Mod-a-LIM

[bonniebird]

Thanks for your thoughts...and I'm sure you are way more versed on these 3.8s than we are since most of our experience is with old V8 muscle (my 67 bird 400 and 327 ss impala etc..) it's so hard to believe that after 4000 miles this would happen especially since the one we took off looked really good to the point that we marked it and packed it away just in case..egr port looked good..I'm just really bummed because I thought we did everything right down to doing the head gaskets since most guys agree that that almost never happens..oh well..

[Jrs3800]

Its a slim chance but its possible that the lower intake could be warped... Haven't heard this a lot, but once in a rare while it happens..

[bonniebird]

We haven't got it totally taken apart yet (weather) but it looks like its gonna be head gaskets...bad compression in 5 of 6 cylinders, 25,35,50,etc...probably due to the cracked radiator that then overheated the car...just so weird since it drove fine the next day after overheating until the tow that night...so I guess we'll be doing the new UIM/LIM parts that we did 9 months ago and also the head gaskets..just hope the heads are ok (I'll have them dipped / fluxed )....wish me luck..

Melanie

[Jrs3800]

Oh wow... Sounds like the gaskets are toast.. Good luck, hope there are no cracks..