Hey, I just bought a 1990 Ford F150 4x4 5.0litre EFI. I checked it over good before buying and it seemed to run good. After driving it home for 3 hours through the mountains it was fine and didn't even so much a stutter once. The next morning i went out and noticed a small puddle of what appeared to be coolant under the centre rear of the engine. I checked the coolant reservoir and it was bone dry, and the radiator coolant level was about 4 inches down. I topped up the coolant and fired it up, letting it warm up to operating temp before shutting it off. While running there was an occasional drip of coolant, but this drip increased to about a drip a second after the engine was shut off. This drip lasted for about 15 minutes. The oil seems quite murky but not frothy or milky, there is no oil in the coolant, and the exhaust smoke is only whiteish for 5 minutes after firing before it clears. It looks like the leak is coming from around the cylinder head or oil pan area at the rear of the engine. The engine idles fine and doesn't miss or overheat at all. What could this be. My buddy reckons air intake manifold gasket or cylinder head gasget. Any help would be great thanks.

 

Run a compression test to rule out the head gasket. Check the soft plugs.

 

Thanks F151,

I'll take it to a garage and get that done. How safe is it to run the engine like this and just keep topping up the coolant in the meantime??

 

wont hurt anything to run it as long as you keep the coolant level up. I would go with the freeze plug idea. Hopefully that is all it is. That is an easy fix.

 

You can drive it forever with a leak as long as you keep the coolant topped up. But if the coolant gets too dilute with water for more than a month or so, the block will start to rust inside, & damage the entire system.

 

Hi

So the coolant leak has been traced to the intake manifold gasket. However, the garage can't give me a quote because supposedly there is a broken bolt and they can't estimate how many hours it will take them. Roughly, how many hours would it take to do this job without a broken bolt? Also, on top of all this, my truck went completely dead today for no reason. It has been starting fine but occasionally will make a strange noise when i turn the key instead of firing, and then fires with the next key turn. Today it made the noise, aqnd then it was dead. As soon as my buddy hooked up the leads, it was totally fine and ran fine for the rest of the day. Should i just get rid of this thing before everything breaks down!!

Thanks

 

Yes. I'll give you $100 for it.

 

Hey thanks man.

Any cahnce you could give me $150 so i can afford a bus ticket back to where i bought it so i can kick the dealers ***!!