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Car Problem - Radiator
Raneados
police apologistyou shouldn't have been there, obviouslyRegistered User regular
police apologistyou shouldn't have been there, obviouslyRegistered User regular
2005 Hyundai Elantra GT probably about
alright a while back my orange engine indicator light came on on the dash. It also regularly got very hot.
A little after that it became difficult to start if it had been driven for a while. I figured this was due to overheating. It would crank alright but had trouble getting to that one point where the engine catches and it starts up. It cranked at normal speed and the lights did not dim when i cranked it. The fuel pump also turned on and off so I figured it was fine.
Occasionally the orange engine light would turn off, only to come back on a little later.
After 2 weeks or so of this i finally was able to get it in to an autozone to determine what was going on. I was told that all I needed was coolant so I filled the tank with the stuff. The guy said to ignore the 50/50 coolant/water rule and just do 100% coolant from now on. While he was filling it with coolant, he told me to turn it on. For some reason he didn't feel the need to put the cap on while i did this and coolant spurted out and spilled quite a lot of it onto various things under the hood. He apologized and wiped a little of it away.
I took it back home and it sat overnight. The next day I drove about 20-ish miles to my mom's place. Highways and roads. About 14 miles in, smoke starts coming out from under the hood. It dies at a stop light and the battery light comes on.
I pop the hood. What i am told is the Radiator Overflow Hose (right next to the cap) has come away, and there's a lot of blackened material around that looks like burned rubber, so I assume it melted. I think the smoke was from the burning coolant, as the air smelled like it (sweet)
I got a tow to a shop and I receive a message today that
1) they need to replace my radiator because of "gunk"
2) they can't seem to start my car. They are thinking i need a new fucking engine
H/A help me not get fucked over a barrel. I am not too handy with cars so layman's terms
I also do not have the car handy, so I'll try my best
I understand there is a Hyundai warranty for 10 years/100,000 miles but i'm not sure if I'm covered
alright a while back my orange engine indicator light came on on the dash. It also regularly got very hot.
A little after that it became difficult to start if it had been driven for a while. I figured this was due to overheating. It would crank alright but had trouble getting to that one point where the engine catches and it starts up. It cranked at normal speed and the lights did not dim when i cranked it. The fuel pump also turned on and off so I figured it was fine.
Occasionally the orange engine light would turn off, only to come back on a little later.
After 2 weeks or so of this i finally was able to get it in to an autozone to determine what was going on. I was told that all I needed was coolant so I filled the tank with the stuff. The guy said to ignore the 50/50 coolant/water rule and just do 100% coolant from now on. While he was filling it with coolant, he told me to turn it on. For some reason he didn't feel the need to put the cap on while i did this and coolant spurted out and spilled quite a lot of it onto various things under the hood. He apologized and wiped a little of it away.
I took it back home and it sat overnight. The next day I drove about 20-ish miles to my mom's place. Highways and roads. About 14 miles in, smoke starts coming out from under the hood. It dies at a stop light and the battery light comes on.
I pop the hood. What i am told is the Radiator Overflow Hose (right next to the cap) has come away, and there's a lot of blackened material around that looks like burned rubber, so I assume it melted. I think the smoke was from the burning coolant, as the air smelled like it (sweet)
I got a tow to a shop and I receive a message today that
1) they need to replace my radiator because of "gunk"
2) they can't seem to start my car. They are thinking i need a new fucking engine
H/A help me not get fucked over a barrel. I am not too handy with cars so layman's terms
I also do not have the car handy, so I'll try my best
I understand there is a Hyundai warranty for 10 years/100,000 miles but i'm not sure if I'm covered
Raneados on
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you can't fix an engine seizing?
Unfortunately it means that the pieces inside the engine got hot, expanded, and locked together. Once they've done that, it pretty much screws the whole thing over.
If it's gotten hot enough to melt things off, it might have seized. But, I would second the idea of taking it to a Hyundai dealer to make sure that the engine really is totally borked.
A lesson for the future: Do not screw around with overheating vehicles, it's expensive.
I'll start looking into hyundai dealers over there
god
fuck
shit
i seriously can't afford the... about 5k+ for a new engine?
seriously this thing has less than 60k miles what the HELL
You've probably warped the head of your engine/blown a head gasket. You can get the head shaved, which is what I did. I ended up getting it done without paying a mechanic, but it wasn't worth it.
It'll take a mechanic at least 6 hours to get it all apart to SEE how much you've fucked it. It's probably not worth the money.
edit: it really sucks but there's not much else you can do. It might end up costing more to fix it than to just buy a new car.
edit 2: it's a 2005. Maybe not then. It'll probably still be really expensive.
My car was only worth about 1 grand...I probably paid about that in parts getting it fixed +20-30 hours of my labour.
godamnit am i back to the fucking bus
If your step-dad trusts the mechanics there, I probably wouldn't bother with the dealership. It must have gotten really hot to burn through that overflow hose, too.
And yeah, it'll be expensive no matter which way you look at it, unfortunately.
because this seems like a thing that should not happen
I'll look into dealerships over there, I'll have more information tomorrow when I'll be able to talk to my step-dad
I don't want to be mean, but it wasn't the car's fault. You basically killed it by letting it overheat a bunch. Two weeks of "very hot" doesn't sound good, especially if your coolant was low for that entire period.
Edit: Also, for future reference, the Autozone guy was quite incorrect, you do not want to run straight coolant. The water provides the actual cooling capacity, the coolant is there to retard corrosion and lower the freezing point while raising the boiling point. If he actually put straight coolant in there it probably hastened your car's demise.
it was running quite fine up until the day after i put coolant in
barf!
Pure ethylene glycol DOES have a higher boiling point than 50/50 antifreeze. The problem is that once it gets to its boiling point, it doesn't turn into vapor as easily as water. Instead, it turns into viscous sludge. If there was a problem with your car's cooling system that was fairly minor, that yo-yo at the autozone turned it into something far, far worse.
WHAT
edit: although I'm not ready to start pointing fingers at anyone but myself, I did not know this
I'm sorry, man...I know what it's like to have a new car go bad on you. Hell, I drove a Lincoln towncar with a cracked engine block for almost 8 months and found out later that it was a miracle the car didn't just burst into flames every single time I started it.
If you're still covered by the Hyundai warranty, I would NOT mention anything that you learned in this thread to them.
There's certainly no harm in contacting Hyundai, though if you mention what actually happened I'm almost positive they'll tell you to bugger off.
I would get a verification from the mechanic that the engine is actually seized before tossing the car, though.
at least now I know where the sludge in the radiator came from and what that black stuff was
i thought it was melted rubber
What color was the sludge and what color was the antifreeze?
computer codes the guy at autozone gave me
P0117
Engine Coolant Temperature Circuit Low
P0196
Engine Oil Temperature Sensor Range/Performance
p0128 x2
Coolant Thermostat Below Thermostat Regulating Temperature
Now, the light on the dash never flashed. I looked at my manual and it said to bring it in whenever i could. It said BLINKING was the immediate STOP DRIVING FUCKING NOW thing. I brought it in when I could
the autozone guy said my only problem was low coolant and added some
the day after: car explode
the sludge I noticed around the radiatr cap and just inside the cap (all i could see) was black, or near it
the coolant was amber
Was it always orange coolant? Because if you had the green stuff in there, and the guy added straight orange... he probably did help it to an early grave. If you mix extended life stuff (orange) with the green without flushing the system, it speeds up corrosion. Least, that's what I've been told. Best thing you can hope for is that the warranty will cover it, even partially, because if the engine seized up you're pretty well fucked.
but the bottle says you can add it or combine it with any other coolant/antifreeze with no problem
Your car guy broke my car
So are you going to pay for the repairs or am I going to write to the local paper about this or what
There's a problem with cars made within the last 15 years or so. The temp gauges are all electronic. They're there to make you feel better that your car isn't overheating. They don't show any sort of real temperature. They just give you an estimate, at best. Notice the needle is ALWAYS perfectly in the center? Yeah, that's because while there is usually a lot of real variation, the ECU of the car won't start moving it until you actually start overheating. And then the needle will suddenly fly up and you'll get overheating warnings.
But yeah. Sorry for your car, Raneados. Since you paid $8K a little over a year ago, and it'll cost you a pretty penny to replace the engine, I'd say just call it junk and get another one. Spend the $5k, or whatever that the shops will charge you to replace your car, on another car.
which is a lot better, but they're still figuring out what is up with everything
I have absolutely no idea what kind of recourse I can bring to the autozone, if any. I have no proof except a receipt saying I bought coolant there with a debit card.
I cannot afford a lawyer, it'd cost less to just buy a shitass car
Have you tried contacting a Hyundai dealer to see if they could look at it from a warranty standpoint?
they said "probably no"
and no it's a used car so i only get a 5 year/60k
and i know i'm grasping at straws with the autozone thing, but apparently it's a big no-no for him to actually:
1) tell me he fixed my problem
2) work on the car himself (he put the coolant in etc)
in all likelihood I'm just going to wrote autozone corporate a letter detailing the whole thing and basically leave it at that. I expect nothing more than a "sucks for you"
but hey, many car lessons are being learned so hooray?
This is entirely different from taking it to a shop to get the oil changed and 5 miles down the road you see your oil gauge at 0 and the engine overheating. In this case you paid for parts and a service and can hold the shop liable for negligence in performing that service.
But yeah, life and car lessons being learned kinda suck. I seized the engine on an old turbo'd LeBaron from stupidly thinking I could make it a few more miles home as the temp gauge is sliding to the right. That was a $2k mistake.
From your description:
alright a while back my orange engine indicator light came on on the dash. It also regularly got very hot.
A little after that it became difficult to start if it had been driven for a while. I figured this was due to overheating. It would crank alright but had trouble getting to that one point where the engine catches and it starts up. It cranked at normal speed and the lights did not dim when i cranked it. The fuel pump also turned on and off so I figured it was fine.
When the engine started having trouble starting, you were boned big time. The damage was already done so to speak and I think its more of a coincidence that it seized the day after autozone than anything autozone did.
You stated that the engine regularly gets very hot. One time getting very hot is all it takes to completely mess a motor up, depending up on how the engine is made. In your case the motor was pretty resilient, a testament to its construction. My guess is that a warranty will not cover you since the computer will probably have logged all of the temperature problems.