Hey all, started encountering some cooling problems over the weekend, I'm concerned it may be the beginnings of a head gasket failure but I'm new to these cars and I'd to hear your thoughts. 2005 Bonneville GXP, about 140000km. Low coolant warning came on about 6 weeks ago, the level looked fine but I added a bit and the light went off shortly afterwards- not immediately thought. This past weekend I took it for a road trip, drove for about 90 minutes at highway speed, and then stopped for about half an hour. After I got moving again, the temperature spiked within about twenty minutes. I pulled off, bought coolant and refilled the reservoir, let it cool down and started off again, kept overheating and crawled to a shop in the next town with several stops to cool down. I should add that at this point coolant has been boiling off the relief hose at the top of the reservoir. The guy at the shop says I'm down a bunch of coolant, so he refills and pressure tests and sends me on my way. I make it about another 75 minutes on the highway and run into the same issues. I add water to the reservoir although it doesn't look particularly low, and crawl into the nearest city. Take it to a shop the next morning. This guy also says I'm really low on coolant. I have a rad flush done, because I can see a lot of gunk in the reservoir alone. He also replaced the rad cap because it's only holding ten pounds of pressure. He suggests that it may be the water pump or the head gasket. At this point I give up on my road trip and drive the 3 hours home and- no issues whatsoever. So next day my low oil light comes on, which I thought was odd because I topped it up before I left for my trip. I was due for an oil change anyway so I took it in, and the tech points out that I'm now leaking oil from what appears to be all over my oil pan gasket. He also points out that my coolant resevoir is now way overfull, so removes the excess coolant. As I'm driving home, my low coolant warning comes on again and it's stayed on ever since. However, my coolant level in the reservoir is correct, I'm checking every time the car cools down. I've also had a couple of instances of rough idle at start up yesterday and today. So I'm thinking either it's the head gasket or it's a combination of a faulty coolant level sensor and the thermostat and/water pump, along with a purely coincidental oil leak. The reason I wonder about the thermostat is that while it was overheating, the temperature would climb and then drop back down to normal operating temperature several times before it took right off, it's pretty unlikely that it was dropping 30 degrees or so once it started getting too hot. So anyway, symptoms are: Overheating with irregular temperature fluctuations Unexplained loss and gain of coolant Inaccurate coolant level readings Oil leak (but not where you'd expect it to happen) Occasional rough idle at start up
I'm really tempted to replace the coolant resevoir/level sensor, the thermostat and the water pump, but I don't want to spend the several hundred more dollars if I'm looking at having a driveway ornament before long anyway. I'm also wondering if the gunk in the cooling system is the remnants of someone putting Barrs Leaks in as a temporary fix before I bought it at 130000Km. Any thoughts?
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