Daniel,
Alan is probably right. When cylinder head gaskets fail the typical symptom
is overheating - if the gasket will leak water into the combustion chamber
on the intake stroke it will certainly leak hot gases to the coolant on the
power stroke. A garage should have a tool to check for CO in the cooling
system. More likely though is a small external leak somewhere. Possible
hidden leaky spots are heater core or valve, water pump, radiator, or intake
manifold. The water pump leaks from the front when it goes bad. The water
will drip out of the pump where the shaft enters the pump body. That may be
difficult to see if the pulley obscures your view of the shaft. The
radiator can have small leaks on the fan side that are obscured by the fan
shroud. Have you flushed your cooling system lately? Sometimes flushing
the system can cause leaks at points where corrosion was the only thing
keeping water in the system. Finally - If you've removed you intake
manifold and then replaced it without replacing the gasket (I've don that a
lot) you could get a leak underneath the manifold where water enters it. If
you've got that, you may get away with tightening down the manifold a bit
more. Make sure that the big washers that go over the studs are on with the
concave side facing the manifold. I had to grind those washers on my car to
make them fit without too much tilt when I put a different exhaust manifold
on. If you or someone else has done that - make sure that the washers are
more or less parallel to the plane of the intake manifold gasket (so that
the pressure they exert is evenly divided between the intake and exhaust
manifolds. As stated before - a bad radiator cap can cause the problem as
well. Hope that helps.
Brian 69 - 2000
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net
[mailto:owner-datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net]On Behalf Of Alan Bent
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2001 10:13 AM
To: R Haug
Cc: Daniel Neuman; datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: The case of the missing water
I had a similar problem with my 1966 SP311, water was slowly disappearing
but no
sign of where. It ended up being the steel plug on the underside of the
intake
manifold which had rusted and created a small hole, the water would drip
from
there down onto the lowere section of the hot exhaust manifold and instantly
evaporate.
Alan.
R Haug wrote:
> Daniel Neuman wrote:
>
> > Hello All,
> > So I have a problem maybe with my car. It seems that I fill
the
> > rad and then a couple of months later its definately lower. The catch
tank
> > is empty and I have to put like 3/4 gal in the rad. I do not see any
> > visiable water leaks-new hoses and water pump. I don't think that I
see
> > any white smoke coming out my tail pipe...What could be causing this
> > water to go missing?? Do I have a baad headgassket?? How does one
tell
> > if the headgasket is bad?? Is there a way to tell without pulling the
head?
> > Even if I did pull the head what are the telltale signs that the
gasket
> > is bad??
> > Daniel 69 2000
> > SF CA
>
> Daniel,
> You may have a bad radiator cap.
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