Suspected Head Gasket!? Help Fast!

[TigerFish]

Where ever your coolant is going, regardless of whether it turned out to be the head gasket, needs to be found asap. If it is left, at some point it is going to go big style and you could end up with a head gasket job after all. Be sure to look down the front of the rad for discolouration inbetween the coolant rad and the air con rad. Easy mistake to make to look in the front of the car and think you are looking at the front of the coolant rad, and thinking it is a-ok, rather than looking at the right one which is sat behind it and corroded to buggery.

The system doesn't need repressurising.

You may be able to get some recourse from the place you bought it from if something like the rad is leaking and needs replacing, especially if it was a trader rather the private sale.

[Yates-Is200S]

ok mate so what sort of discoulouration am i looking for? sort of darkish or white? i will have a look at the rad, it does look slightly discouloured if you look throught the front bumper grille. maybe the rad may be on its way out? so if i pull the coolant plug at the bottom i can just put the cap back on and refill as normal?

[Yates-Is200S]

The coolant i have is long life toyota PINK. premixed.

just the standard toyota sort from a genuine dealer.

They recomended pink.

I take it this acts as an Antifreeze aswell??

[kam05]

Is yours a 2000/2001 car?

If it is then the red coolant is recommended (this needs to be changed every 2 years/20k). Your dealer is wrong. I think the pink coolant lasts 10 years. Personally, I don't believe in changing the coolant every 10 years. I think the later IS200's use the pink coolant.

Yes it acts as anti freeze as well.

As Tigerfish says check that your radiator is not leaking, my radiator sprung a leak at 90k, I got a replacement radiator (patterned part) for £135. Lexus wanted £250 for a replacement radiator!

Edit: also check that there isn't coolant leaking from the waterpump as well.

[Yates-Is200S]

so what is the exact procudure of changing and draining the coolant?

[Yates-Is200S]

Just changed the coolant.. levels ok and i have topped it up to full on both rad and the bottle.

everything looks and sounds ok i have taken it for a drive round for half an hour and the temp gauge is perfect.

i removed the lower engine protector which is a joke lol, and then drained the coolant out of the drain plug making sure all the caps were open. after draining it i flushed the rad out with the hose. once it was all drained i replaced the plug and put in about a half a litre, started the engine and put the fans on the screen full, then i continuid to pour in the coolant so that it circulated into the engine and untill rad was to its full level.

suprisingly it took around 4 litres of coolant however that wasnt just the rad it included filling the black ressi bottle which is around a litre or so atleast.

so i was just checking if i did everything correctly?

i was also told that it just self pressurises itself so was no need to represurise anything??

[Rob]

have a look here http://bahamutcars.free.fr/workshop/IS_98-05/index.html repair manual > cooling> coolant

the coolant you used is premix so you still had a lot of water in the engine block so the premix is quite diluted... this may be ok for the UK winter and is far better than plain water.

[Yates-Is200S]

where the hell is the bleeding nipple thing?? it says bleed the system but where is it located?

[ormi]

all sorted and it hasn't got a bleed nipple on the cooling system. :winky: