3.0L engine swap

[Farrar]

I drove 60+ miles today and waited until the engine was nice and cool before popping the cap to see what color the coolant is.

It's green!

[AugustneverEnds]

Bravo!!!

Nice to hear your persistence has paid off

[Farrar]

Thanks, Nick!

I guess I should also say that my experience with this should be a cautionary tale: anyone doing an engine swap needs to inspect the donor engine to see if there is any brown Dex-Cool sludge in it. If you're going to have to flush sludge out, you might as well flush it out before the engine is installed and connected to the rest of the system, where it can clog the radiator and heater core.

[DMC5180]

According to a few articles and videos I've found on the subject of Dex-Cool sludge, the problem is that the sludge forms when air is introduced to the coolant. So if there was a coolant leak that allowed air to enter the system, it was possible for the sludge to form

Yes, the brown mud tends to form in high points and air traps within the cool system where the cool doesn’t flow. My daughter had a 2000 Grand Prix with 3600 V6. I had too pull the Intake manifold on it and replace the composite intake gaskets. There was was passage in each head that was blocked off from coolant flow by the gasket. When I Removed the gasket the cavity was full of mud. The rest of the coolant passages with flow were bright and clean aluminum with no signs of mud at all.


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[Farrar]

I've driven over 150 miles this week. As I found myself at Costco for the second time since Sunday, this little idea popped into my head. Enjoy.

bttgs.jpg

[Lwanmtr]

Hehe funny

[Farrar]

I drove the car a dozen times this week without problems. Fortunately, the end of the cooling system debacle means that I can get back to work on this "rolling resto-mod." Now I can stop worrying about that and get to work on some of the other things that need attention. As followers of this thread may already be aware, I was doing some modifications to improve the interior lighting and some other electrical work. And since I'm not spending my money on cooling system and a/c parts I can finally get around to replacing the automatic transmission controller. Time to move on. ... or should I say "Time to drive on"?

[DMC5180]

Great work on the HP/LP harness wiring.


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[Farrar]

Great work on the HP/LP harness wiring.

Thanks, Dennis! For the first few years of ownership I had no garage and limited tools, and things started going south on the car a lot faster than I'd planned, so I had to "make do" a lot. But now I have a garage and a work bench and so many other luxuries I didn't have back then, so working on the car is a lot more fun because I can do things the right way at last!

[Farrar]

Just a quick note to say that I have driven the car regularly since the radiator swap and have had no cooling problems. The coolant still looks good and I haven't touched it in weeks.