car overheating, leaking elbow

[azrscamaro]

the story started when i was gone serving my country for the last 6 months, i planned to fly home and drive back out to california i asked my girlfriend to do a few things to the car so it was ready to go. she changed the oil and drove the car a while and then it started smoking and stalled. it cooled off and she drove it again. when i got here i noticed there was no coolant whatso ever in the car, obviously disregarded the check fluids first thing, i added like 2.5 gallons. which explains why the temp guage wasnt showing any temp because there was no coolant at all. this is clearly very bad for the motor. now the car keeps over heating even now that i have changed the water pump, radiator, both hoses, the belt, the thermostat and the cap. last night i noticed coolant bubbling out from under the intake manifold. upon closer looking i noticed a small black elbow going from the intake manifold to the big alominum water pump heater hose tensioner assembly. has anyone replaced, had problem with that item and how hard is it to replace it. thx

[95 camaro]

sounds like a blown head gasket but Im no expert.

[97camRS]

I've had to change that intake elbow twice since Last November. I just changed that and my water pump last week. Shouldn't take you 20 or 30 minutes to do it. Remove the belt tensioner assembly and that's about it. The first time I changed it I broke the Assembly though, so becareful with that. Not sure who the genius is that came up with this elbow, but it sucks! Seems like everyone has a problem with it cracking. You can do a search on here also to get the part number for it, I think they are like $5.

[CamaroRob97]

I fell bad for your engine if it ran with no coolant. Is the elbow acutlly leaking? Cause it sounds like your just throwing parts at it for no reason. The problem is internal sounds like, are you burning it out of the tailpipe? If you over heated like you said it has somthing to do with the head or headgasket more then lucky.

Good luck your need it [img]smile.gif[/img]

[azrscamaro]

yep it appears to be my head gasket. small amount of white smoke out of exhaust only on start up, but its getting worse every day. and i have to add about 500ml of coolant every morning. who has done just a head gasket i think it would be easier to pull the motor to change the head gasket since its cramed under the dash and also im thinkin my heads may be warped so ill probably need a new pair and want to port, polish, valve job and maybe undercut valves any advice.

[BobbyZ72]

If it were mine id sell it..it will never be the same. Cheaper to buy you a new one. If you car was stalling due to over heating major damage has already been done to every thing in that engine.

[98Camaro3.8]

Pain in the ***, but nothing terribly difficult if you know what you're doing. No need to pull the engine to swap the heads, though.