Oh man. This sucks. So a week or two ago I have noticed the coolant and oil light being on. I look at the oil stick, and it reads pretty much full. coolant looks ok, but I have none in the resevior tank. I fill that up with bottled water, and off I go to the store to grab some more Royal Purple. Get home, and top it off just a bit to make sure. Checking the dipstick, the Oil is... well, still full. Thing is, the oil light comes on very dimly to full bright, and the coolant goes off and on randomly. I hardly get to drive the car because my exhaust is a RB header, burned out cat, and about 3 inches of welded pipe, plus the out of tune carb. Well, today I go out for a little run, and notice the Coolant light is off, then turns on. And stays on. I get home (the dinging is still in my ears from that damn light) and notice that i have very little coolant in the tank. Car cools off and I check the rad. I have some in the rad, but I can see the metal plate when I look inside. Again, I fill it with some bottled water.

I dont get it. No leaks around the hoses, nor near the radiator. My engine is only 15k on the rebuild. I cant get in contact with the P.O of the engine. Last time I talked to him was when I bought it, and he got the car from someone else who said they had it rebuilt. No paperwork. No company who built it. When I transplanted the engine into my current RX, I saw the blue rebuilt plate on the front cover. Everything matches up, but I dont know where the coolant is going. Could I be burning it? I cant tell from any fumes, since I basically have no Exhaust.

I guess I need to check hardcore for leaks (saw no drippage on the driveway) and recheck my freezeplugs.

If the freezeplugs are not on all the way, does the engine get hot enough to burn the coolant off on the outside?

 

This is easy. As for the coolant issue if you have no leaks then you are burning it. Or You have alot of air bubbles still in your system that are making there way out to the overflow tank. I had thisbroblem with my GSL 12a but i kne i was burning coolant on start up when motor was cold. As for the oil check your wires. If you have oil on your dipstick but you light comes on and off randomly its probably bad or most common very dirty connectors. Do a search on which wires as there are many pics on this.

 

If I am burning coolant, it is rebuild time correct?

 

you might want to chk your heater core, you know where the heat for inside the car comes from and chk too see if your passenger side floor is wet or not. it may not be the case but it could be and one last thing to worry about being the prob!

 

I had this problem with a bad radiator cap. It would spray through a seal crack only under built-up pressure and when the car was off I never saw water because it was spraying in a location that I couldn't see. Even though it wasn't a lot of water spraying, over time it would run it out.

 

I will check that, I have a 9lb cap, I heard people using 20lb. Looks like I am running to autozone for this one.

Will check the heater core/passenger floor as well!

 

Definitly check that heater core. I had the exact same issue in my 85. You couldn't tell from looking at the heater core, or feeling the carpet, but when I pulled up some carpeting to run some wires you could see coolant was slowly building up under there.

 

Don't know if this matters much, but your radiator cap should be 13lbs.

 

smell your exhaust. if you're burning coolant, it'll smell sorta like cotton candy. it doesn't neccessarily have to plume white, especially at idle, as that tends to happen when it's a large leak but not a small seep.

If your exhaust smells like the usual Eau De Wankel, then move on to checking your carpet around the centre dash and passenger side for dampness to see if you've an HVAC core leak.

 

I had the same problem, it turned out it was my radiator cap - and 13lbs is the correct one to get.

You might also want to check the hose leading from the cap to the overflow and make sure that there isn't any small hole or crack in there, that can also cause the condition you are describing.

Definitely throw a $5.00 radiator cap and some new hose for the overflow at it before thinking about rebuilding. Also, look for seepage around your hoses and tighten up the clamps as another check.