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Need some assistance and I’m not even sure where to start troubleshooting. My son was driving back to college the other night (of course I was out of town) and he wasn’t paying attention to the dashboard but the car started overheating and pretty quickly stopped working. He immediately pulled over and shut it off, we had the vehicle towed back to our driveway. Sure enough the extra coolant tank is dry, I topped it off and the level did drop down some but not completely. I checked the oil dipstick, it looks great, not milky or chocolate and it’s at proper level so I don’t think water got into the oil. The Transmission fluid on the other hand, when measured cold, is up very, very high on the dipstick, like half way up the dipstick. It still looks very red and not watered down. I checked that because I think the hose that’s broken is right behind the transmission dipstick which was dislodged when I went to look at it. When I put water in the coolant tank, it did not come rushing out anywhere, but it’s not under pressure so it may not mean anything. Anyway, I wanted to at least try to start the car to pressurize the cooling system and see where it’s failing. However, I’m unable to start the car, it just cranks and cranks and cranks and once in awhile it might ignite and backfire but it never starts. Do I have a cracked block, blown head gasket, what? What can I check and what can I do as next steps to get this car running or at least diagnosed to determine if it needs to be scrapped?
Also – I did pull codes but had none.
Update — I just did some digging and cleaning and found a broken hose. I’ve attached the picture. It looks like it comes out of the top of the engine block, where the water pump connects on the left of the engine (sitting in driver’s seat) and into the heater core. It also looks like there is a vacuum hose that is disconnected, it doesn’t feel like there is much substance to the hose so not sure it’ll stay on there. I’ve attached two pics. One question I have is can one remove the hose that looks like it goes into the heater core, or is that a complete, pre assembled hose that requires getting into the heater core, or whatever it’s connected to?
Thanks in advance to all who read/suggest.
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you can remove any hose as long as you replace it,
As for picture 2 that looks like a Vacuum pipe which should be connected to where its snapped off. No wonder your having trouble starting the car.
As a quick test have someone start the car while you put your finger over both ends of the broken pipe nad where it connects, If it then starts you’ll need to replace it or do a quick fix with some duck tape.
With that type of hose, you need to replace it as a complete unit. You can’t separate the rubber from the metal seal. The hose looks like it might be a transmission cooler line. Not sure about the vacuum lines underneath. There may be a vacuum diagram printed under the hood that might be helpful there.
As for the no start condition. The engine could have been damaged from the overheat. Here’s information on diagnosing no starts.
http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/solving-automotive-no-start-problems
The transmission being overfilled is puzzling. It might have gotten overfilled, but it may also be that the transmission cooler inside the radiator is leaking. If that’s the case then it could be overfilled because of coolant leaking into the system. Either way, it’s something I think you need to address.
Here’s information on finding coolant leaks and diagnosing overheats.
http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/what-to-do-when-your-engine-overheats
Good luck and keep us posted.
Here’s an update, and thank you to all that replied. I have not yet had a chance to see all the way through all the videos that ETCG linked for me. I took my pictures to the local Ford dealer and we figured out that what I needed was a heater hose bypass assembly. it has several hoses and two anchors to the firewall. Unfortunately, they charged $132 at the Ford dealership. My local Autozone charged $60 and it actually looked to be a better quality. After fighting with the disassembly for almost an hour a light bulb came on. The two anchors on the firewall were impossible. One was so rusted I couldn’t get the nut off the bolt, the bolt is mounted on the firewall and no easy access to the other side from under the car. The second one was behind something else mounted on the firewall and nearly impossible to get at. The entire assembly comes out of the thermostat, routes in/out of the heater core and back into the water pump on the other side of the engine. As you might see from the pictures, someone else had this issue so my failure was actually from a faulty repair of the previous owner that had use some sort of rubber goop and taped it with something akin to electrical tape. What I did instead of the hose assembly was cut off 9″ of the heater tubing and replace it with new. I had to go to Home Depot to get a 5/8″ brass spear but with that and some hose clamps I got the system back together and it’s holding water.
Now here’s my next issue. The car starts just fine but it’s running very rough, almost like there’s water in the tank or something, that kind of feeling. The CEL is coming on, and off, mostly on. I pulled the codes and it’s saying that cylinder #2 is mis-firing. This is one of the three cylinders on the back side of the engine block facing the firewall. I took it for a very short spin around the block. It’s not leaking water where I did my repair. However, it appears to be putting out a fair amount of water out of the tail pipe. Also, there was some water coming somewhere from where the water pump is as that side of the engine compartment was all wet. Additionally, the radiator fans never turned on. Now I ran it for about 10m and it was a very, very hot day, in the mid 90’s at least. I would have thought the radiator fans would have turned on but they didn’t.
My question is do you think I’m wasting my time? Again, there appears to be no water in the oil but I’m wondering if there is a crack or something that’s causing cyl #2 to act up, and take on water which is ending up at the tail pipe. My wife doesn’t want me to spend any more money on this but I don’t really want to spend the money on a new car either. Either way I’d like to at least find out what happened on this Taurs before I donate it for scrap.
Appreciate any suggestions and/or feedback.
You need to do a compression/leak down test on the cylinder. If it’s leaking into the water jacket (cracked block/head or bad head gasket) compression will be zilch and a leak down will show the test air going into the coolant overflow (bubbles).
I would have said using a chemical test kit… but if it’s missing, there may be no combustion gases to show up during the test. Edit- from what
I’m seeing even if its missing the fuel vapor will show.
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