As a former middle school teacher - one who had previous experience with all things Kiekhaefer Mercury, Homelite outboards and chainsaws, on and on….. I do agree with MarioCrayola71 You outta think about some disinterested youth who’d benefit mightily…
Definitely a great teacher and I don't tire of the similar videos (like he's (Eric) often concerned about 'just another brake video'). I think they're incredibly helpful and each vehicle, for the lay-person, has little subtle tricks and differences that when he imparts that knowledge a true god-send in helping others.
My dad's a Chrysler master tech, and hes made a lot of money doing heads and cams and oil coolers on these pentastars. Work for Chrysler and you won't ever be short of work! But hearing the stories day in and day out about working conditions at the dealerships made me choose to become an electrician as my career, and I drive a beat up chevy truck that i can fix myself in the driveway instead of something newer. Awesome video, Eric
The way they designed that oil cooler is absurd. This past winter we had 4 different styles of replacement coolers on the shelf. Some prefer metal some prefer factory and some really don't care. One week in January we did four.
@@Troy_Built thanks Troy - from what I’ve researched, the 3.5 has an oil cooler where rad coolant runs through oil filter housing. This causes blockages and causes intermittent heat loss. An easy fix but a pain nonetheless lol
I was working on a 4-Runner, similar symptoms. With a 5-gas analyzer, I showed the customer 1600 ppm HC at the radiator cap and only 50 ppm at the exhaust. He said that his neighbor said it was a water pump and that I Was just trying to rip him off with head gaskets. On my way home I saw the vehicle in the side of the road. Oh well…
I've never seen him do one, it's pretty easy, just time consuming. Lots of vids from other guys on YT, That's how I learned how to do it. That tick is an easy fix, unfortunately it will probably fixed by some hack or just resold as-is. Just going to get worse.
@@AndyMcBlane I have leather seats in my car and unless the sun is shining in directly, they are not too bad, but can be a tad cold during the winter for a few minutes though. I like leather seats however.
My current Caravan is the first vehicle I’ve owned that has leather seats. Much prefer fabric…leather is hot in summer, cold in winter, takes forever for the heated seat to warm up. Leather reminds me of the vinyl seats in the 80’s.
Good One, Eric. As a 65 yo shade tree mechanic, watching your videos teaches me different nuances to fixing cars. Interesting that one should rev the engine to get the pressure up to sense combustion gases. (Scotty didn't mention this!) Good teamwork with your brother and Mrs. O having your back. 👍
My sister in law bought a Chrysler 200 brand new and did not ask anyone about her choice. Would have told her not to buy any Chrysler product if she asked. Did not say anything negative to her about her purchase….. but she is learning the hard way with every repair bill !
One of the things that I love about your videos is that you dont throw the ASE certified mechanic stuff under everyone's throat. We all KNOW your a master mechanic and there's NOTHING you can't fix. Your like Andy Taylor the sheriff without a gun! I always love your videos and can't wait till the next one.
"16 psi cap, feels like 15.8 so that's good". It's handy having the right pressure testing tools at hand when you are doing this type of job. I love it when you do and say things like that Eric 🤣 You always put a smile on my face 😄
Yes. Was about to comment about the "handcrometer". Never heard of it before. Know of the "eyecrometer" instead of the micrometer, but handcrometer is next level. Retired mechanic/machinist in Land Down Under.
The problem is electronic, not the battery. I got a Pacifica, does the same thing. Something in the system just decides its nap time. Usually 25 minutes , fires right off. Gave up on fixing after looking at replacement of engine control computer. Now it is growing moss and housing squirrels. First and last Chrysler i ever bought. Thank the gods it was REAL cheap used.
getting info from the customer can be a double edged sword.. sometimes they minimize things, thinking they will get a lower repair bill for some reason..
I have had a few head gasket issues that would not present driving around town. Give it back to customer and tell ‘em its ok. The freeway trip is the touchstone. Great info on the heater core involvement. Very fine educational video on difficult to detect head gasket.
A friend of mine back from Vietnam told me while there the phrase was, “Cheer up, things could get worse.” “So we cheered up and sure enough, things got worse!”😵💫😎🤜🤛
Picoscope with pressure pulse sensor or pressure trabnsducer in the cooling system (and any sync signal of the engine) would have been interesting. Not that it really matters which cylinder is leaking when an engine replacement is the solution, but being able to see one specific cylinder putting pressure in the cooling system really hammers the nail into the coffin.
"Better coffins always use screws, best use screws and glue, I routinely use screws and glue." My Cousin Vinny ( unused lines from Mona Lisa Vito's courtroom scene)
sometimes you can pull the spark plugs when cold not HOT , you could rip the threads in the head if the engine is hot ,, pull plugs hope they were not just changed and the plug that is clean or cleaner then the rest could be your bad cyl ..
I feel your pain Eric. I owned a 1984 Chrysler Laser Turbo back in the day and I lost track of how many times that pig overheated on the highway, I remember doing the same thing waiting for a tow truck, Sitting there thinking about the choices I've made and vowing never to buy another Chrysler product again. Here it is almost 40 years later and that's a choice I've never regretted after buying Toyota products.
@@brianburns7211 Wow, you know my personal issues with that car ( brand new off the lot) Let me list them for you 1984 - Head gasket went twice ( towed twice), ECM stopped working ( replaced) , water pump seized up (towed and replaced) , passenger window power belt broke. 1985 - gas tank developed leak, replaced tank, Head gasket blown for 3rd time ( highway towed) , Alternator blew up on highway ( towed) ,1986 - Turbo blew on highway ( towed) right side CV joint failed ( replaced) , End cap blown off radiator ( towed) , Chrysler replaced radiator , new radiator lasted 7 minutes and end cap blew off again( towed back to shop) , 1987 - Driver window power belt broke ( replaced ) , Catalytic converter caught fire at a gas station ( thankfully it was raining) . Overheating issue warning from voice interface started, Thermostat changed , Radiator changed , core changed, heating issues continued , ECM changed again to rectify intermittent warnings, 1988- Engine finally failed at 107,000 Kilometers. 27K outside of warranty. Purchased a 1990 Toyota Tercel and drove it for 495,000 Kilometers and other than routine maintenance only had to replace gooseneck for gas tank, wonder why Scotty is right.
That’s user error. You had it fail so many times and you didn’t do anything about it. Funny, my dodge grand caravan almost overheated once, because the fan relay was dead. Replaced the relay, never got close to overheating again. This is why you got a toyota, its more resilient to zero maintenance, but it will still come and get you. Infact I think a Toyota Appliance is the perfect vehicle for you. Remember, inanimate objects didn’t jump infront or behind you, YOU drove into them.
@@goclunker I wouldn't call spending thousands of dollars ( in the 80's) in repairs and " maintenance" doing nothing about it, However listening to the last mechanic I took this POS to when it finally died he said the 2.2 L Mitsubishi engines were prone to overheat due to insufficient coolant flow to the engine from undersized hosing and radiators, especially with the Turbos, It's good that you had a relay issue , Mine however still had upper and lower fan speeds operating until it died, One of the few parts that were actually still working on it, But I must say the tranny was solid.
@@goclunker That goes back to the old saying "any car will last as long as you take care of it", which is 100% wrong. Some cars have built-in faults that no amount of maintenance can overcome.
@@johnhegarty1761 No way. If it wasn't for Iacocca, Chrysler wouldn't be here today---he saved them from bankruptcy. First the K car and then the minivans turned Chrysler around
I’ve never seen a flat bed like that. Freaking sweet. Mowers are mighty. I would make a rule to always have the jump box on highway burns. I feel like when I watch SMA, it’s like going to your fav class back in school. Always learn cool shit and almost always entertained ( not the break down part). Luv me sum SMA
We have a 13 like that. The rear head cracked under warranty. The dealer told us then that the rear head cracking on the 200s was fairly common. Why who knows.
Eric, your the best. Love your stories and when you question about being a mechanic. Great diag analysis. Learned a ton about head gasket leak effects on the system. Too funny about the buy here/pay here fix. They will probably dump in head gasket sealer to the cooling system and out she goes. Keep em coming. Always love when you mash it, especially up that hill past the cemetery, your waking every BODY up.
I think they may have already dumped sealer in it. the intermiitent circulation thru the heater core when u give it the beans may be a clue. I wonder if tightening down the head bolts a bit would stop the leak.
Great video. It's a gd shame that the customer has a car from a disreputable dealer. But I loved that you were doggedly determined, as usual to get that definitive cause, piece of mind for you and your customers.
My father in law runs around town in a 2004 Wrangler. Waiting in a long line of cars for something, he had two simultaneous failures that led to an exciting third. Bad coolant temp sensor caused it to fail to turn the fan on.... and a bad radiator cap failed to vent when the coolant overheated. Unfortunately, the weakest link pressure-wise turned out to be the top rail of the radiator, which blew apart with one hell of a bang.
one of the guys I work with has a promaster that did exactly what this card just did when you hit the pedal to the plastic. It most certainly has a blown head gasket, the computer is detecting that it is getting low compression on one of the cylinders when you go full throttle, and it is cutting the throttle to prevent any more damage. This condition doesn't appear when you aren't hammering on it, because it's not actually looking or able to compare statistical data that it knows to the actual data it's receiving. That comparison only occurs at Full Throttle, and with a head gasket leak the compression in one of those back three cylinders is much lower, thus resulting in under-performance of what is expected.
I took auto mechanics my 11th and 12th grade year and i have still learned quite a bit from watching you and Ray. There a still something's that i don't feel comfortable doing but i can do most of the major repairs myself
That block test is kind of like a flu test-If it's positive you have a problem but if it's negative you may still have a problem. Sucks on one bank, but airing up the cylinders and looking for bubbles/coolant level surge always tells the truth.
@@frankish5314 yes, one cylinder at a time with the piston at tdc. Seen another way by using a pressure transducer piped into an adapter that you can screw in place of a radiator cap. With a scope sync on one of the cylinders you can see which cylinder may be pumping gas into the cooling system via the waveform. Super Mario has a vid about it.
Awesome video! I really could have used it about 2 months ago. The customer "my son" brought his Equinox to 2 different GM dealers. The first put in a thermostat, the second wrote an estimate for pretty much everything. Water pump, intake manifold, spark plugs, serpentine belt and head gaskets at $3,500. It was the head gasket. You're still the best on the World Wide Web!
I had a 2019 Encore in last week. I had to drive it 40 miles to get it to overheat. It passed a block test before the test drive, but definitely failed after. Luckily it did not overheat to the point of leaving me stranded.
Do those have the little turbo engines that the block cracks? or is it just head gasket on those? You'd think after building ICE engines for over 100 years they wouldn't have head gasket issues anymore, at least not on a 2019 model.
@@kennygee2715 I leaned more toward a cracked head, since it took 40 miles of driving to get it to show up on a block test. A blown gasket would show up a lot sooner than that.
Great video. As a heavy diesel mechanic. We see this often. I always find putting a clear line depending where you can tap it into the system. Never lets me down. You can see the air very clear in the line e.g combustion gas or if the water pump is pumping.
i have a jeep sitting in my yard with the 3.8l, i havent seen any bubbles but there is always pressure in the cooling system, the thing can sit all winter and when you take the radiator cap off there will be some pressure in it. edit, just checked it and it was not under pressure this time.
Also if you want to confirm you didn't get antifreeze in your tester turning the fluid yellow, you can pump clean fresh air thru the fluid and it'll turn back blue again.
Awsome diag Eric o!! U should advise the customer that he should have his next car checked out by you before paying the scam dealers. Dealers like those make people life miserable.
Another quick and dirty way to test for excessive pressure and possibly a week cap is connect your coolant pressure tester the vehicle and take it for a short drive.
I’m about 9 minutes in and this reminds me of an identical 200 I worked on when I worked at a Chrysler dealer. Customer came in with an overheating concern. Checked the coolant level first thing and saw this sludge in the bottom of the reservoir. Drained the coolant only to find out there was a TON of casting sand from the manufacturing process of the block left over and circulating through the cooling system. Good times.😂😂
So I'll ask: When you know the customer is gonna get screwed on the purchase or repair by the Lemon Lot, do you inform them of what needs to be done correctly and what the other shop will do? I can see both sides of this answer being correct.
I bought my Avalon from one of those "questionable" small dealerships about 2 years ago when getting used cars was kind of difficult. I looked it over but it was my first Toyota so I wasn't all that knowledgeable about what to look for. The fluids were clean, car needed an alignment and the oil light kind of flickered at stop lights. Car ran pretty smooth otherwise. I drove it home and immediately changed the oil, everything looked "too clean" to me for some reason. The oil came out completely black and sludgy, not like the pure gold on the dipstick. I also saw some metallic flakes in it. After long drives, the next time i started it, a large cloud of smoke would come out the tailpipe. Turns out, they dropped the oil pan, cleaned out the sludge with a scraper, changed the valve cover gaskets and changed the oil to sell it. I pulled the valve covers and they were full of hard black solid carbon that used to be sludge. It was everywhere, in the heads, on the cams, in the oil valleys and in the block. Some parts of the head hadn't seen fresh oil for thousands of miles and when I removed the intake, liquid oil poured out of it. A few months ago the death rattle started and I heard the rod knock. While I was waiting for this dude to show up to his "dealership" so I could get the plates, another guy who was also waiting told me the Jeep he bought accelerated by itself at random inconvenient times. This guy buys cars at auction out of town, polishes them up and sells them at a reasonable price but at a cost of your sanity. Beware of problem years, always check the year of your car for common problems because certain years will be prone to problems they fixed in later years.
There are quite a few "fly by night" used car dealers in my area but, there is one that actually backs up what he sells. I once bought a Ford Bronco II there that kept spitting out the rear U-joint. After the 3rd time, the owner took it back and credited everything I'd paid towards an F-150 4×4. They then used it as a shop truck and had the same issue 2 more times. A few payments on the F-150 later, the Bronco II was back on the lot. It turned out that the rear yoke had a small crack right next to one of the bolt holes for the U-joint straps. The crack would open up under acceleration and allow the U-joint cap to "walk" slightly each time. They fixed it for me every time though and it took sending the driveshaft to a machine shop to be magna fluxed to actually find the problem. Other than that issue, it was a nice, clean little truck. A coworker of mine actually bought and drove it for several years with nothing more than regular maintenance. I never had any issues with the F-150 either so I was happy. Just thought I'd share this because, while there are definitely a lot of junk dealers out there, there are also a few good ones. I still buy vehicles from that dealer now.
That’s pretty common for small used car lots. Especially if there’s a body shop and,or mechanic shop attached to them. Even knowing what to look for it can be hard to really know the condition without taking stuff apart.
Toyota appliance drivers maintain them exactly like mopar owners. Zero maintenance. Toyotas are more resilient to it than mopars. They fail eventually too.
14:05 As far as hearing the coolant rushing through.....I say, sloshing around. With my Chrysler 200 with the 3.6 the coolant clogged my heater core and after I let a dealer change the heater core and coolant THAT's when I started to hear the coolant sloshing around. I just figured they didn't bleed all the air out, which is typical of things these days.......they almost never do the job right. (Unlike Eric O.) So I'd be very curious about what the fix is for that sloshing sound. It ain't right.
I had an issue similar to this on my old P38 Range Rover with 3.5 V8. I’m from the UK. The coolant system would pressurise after short drive and there was nothing obvious I could see which would indicate the problem. I had the car for a couple of months, there was little service history on the car and what was there made no mention of when the head gaskets were last changed. I decided that to be sure, I would change the head gaskets and replace the timing components too. After a couple of days, waiting for the heads to come back from being skimmed and cleaned, I got to work rebuilding the top end and all seemed good. Fuel economy improved slightly, engine ran more smoothly and everything was right with the world. Until, that is, the coolant system started getting pressurised again. While I was looking in the engine bay I noticed what I can only describe as a wet spray mark on the bonnet sound deadening material. I leaned forward a little and got a very faint misting of fluid hitting my face. It was then that I had a bit of eureka moment and said to myself that I hadn’t changed the water pump. It turns out that the type of water pump on this vehicle was the type which had a drip hole on the housing, just under the shaft for the impeller. Very similar to what was used on the Chevy short block, I believe. After ordering a new pump I set about pulling the old one off and would you believe, someone had plugged the hole which is an indicator of when the seal is going bad. Like an early warning system. I’m no mechanic but I believe that what had been happening is that air was being drawn in while the engine was warming up and when I got up to temperature and began pressuring, it would then start forcing out a small amount of fluid. Once replaced the water pump it ran like a dream and I never had an issue with it after that.
Good job. Yes we have skunks all over, that sell things that should not be sold!!!! Great overview, to teach us what really goes along the trouble shooting on overheating issue. Thanks.
You should always carry a battery jumper when you test drive a car with problems. Especially when you have a iffy battery. I always have one in my vehicle just in case. Never know when a battery will die.
Being a Chrysler product it's odd the trans hasn't fried along with the head gasket but that may happen with the next unfortunate owner😂 good video Eric.
Every day I watch You videos alone. Something new about walking on vehicles. That I never even I will talk about doing. Thanks to you, I know how to walk on vehicles. Even better than I ever have Avoca vehicles with my father's since I was like, 2 or 3 years old.and I am 33 new
Thank you Mrs. O for giving him all of the hard times for breaking that car, that I would've given him! 🤣👍 (All that matters is that it's running at the end of the day) 🥳🙃
Had a 99 Legacy with IDENTICAL symptoms. Definitely a gead gasket. With the old subarus on a cold engine you can leave the coolant cap off and crank it, if the coolant shoots out like a geyser it's a blown HG.
I believe what you say is true and watching you work makes me and should make you proud of the fact you’re not a parts changer and want to fix the problems correctly and not put a bandaid on the problem. I say Way To Go.
I had a thermostat stick open on a 2.8L chevy V6 during my university days while driving from Rochester, NY to Buffalo, NY in January when it was 10 degrees outside. My girlfriend and I almost froze to death on the Thruway. We used a ton of gas too. At least it was just the thermostat, which I replaced in the same 10 degree weather because I did not have access to a garage. That 2.8L motor was pretty good, only needing a water pump and MAF while I owned it. Sold it at 125k and it was still working great. I wanted an F-150.
I had the same thing.... Thermostat stuck open on a 16f day. Had to drive 2 hours to drop my girlfriend off at college and it was a frigid trip on the highway. It was a relief getting into traffic in town when heat came back. I was too young to think about putting cardboard over the radiator... But it was blocked anyways and impossible to get to.
..Sometime you just have to floor it - years ago a friend of mine worked at a dealership as a mechanic - he took a Jag XJS out for a test drive - customer complaint: makes a funny noise at 125mph.. at 110mph, blue lights in the mirror.. he showed the cop the job sheet, and the cop nodded and smiled.. as he wrote out the speeding ticket..
I've always hated when they came in after multiple overheats. Was the head gasket the original problem, or did they warp the head by playing parts cannon?
I would guess that most of the time when a car burns a gasket, it's in the hands of a human. Many people who drive a car on a daily basis, don't give two shits about any tempture gauges
@@mercer982 I have recurring nightmares about driving cars that overheat. I've always taken any car I've owned with a nudging gauge straight to a shop. It's a pathological fear. No blown gaskets, though.
20:28 interesting ramp truck. Only ever seen those rigs hauling roll off dumpsters and stuff never a flat bed. Makes sense though because you can drop the bed right flat on the ground then just pick the whole bed up onto the truck! Makes the truck that much more versatile.
I apologize Eric. When you went pedal to the medal and she quit i fell a sleep lol. Keep up the good work and keep them videos coming. I've learned a lot by your experience.
Serious question: If a car dies like that on a test drive, who pays for the tow truck, you or the customer? That could wipe out any profit you might have made if you had to pay for it.
I think he or his family also have a tow truck or tow trucks. There was a video where he was working on heavy equipment. Mentioned something about a tow truck
@@briteidea08 It was his brother that picked him up but I think the question is valid, in the event you didn't have a brother with a tow truck... I'd imagine the mechanic would be liable to pay for it, but most mechanics would have some kind of backup plan, like a recovery membership such as the AA or RAC, here in the UK (at least a tow rope and someone back at the shop to come to the rescue).
I was wondering that too, and also the 'wait' time. I'd guess that since its a vehicle failure, that its all charged back to being part of the diagnosis.
Had my 200 serviced. They did a head gasket repair, since it was leaking a bit. Then now my cams are bad. Contacted Chrysler HQ since the service advisors want me to pay for the repairs they caused. But I do love 2011-2014 200's so much.
It's a shame that the customer is gonna have to do battle with the used car lot. Write down that VIN - You'll be seeing that one again when they sell it to the next suckah! Excellent troubleshooting and clearly the right diagnosis.
Yeah, I wonder how many times they've re-sold that same car after it has the same issues LOL. Lots of car lots where I live are shady like this...oh that's gonna be expensive to fix, here we will just swap cars with you and get rid of this one that isn't working....wash, wax, put it back on the lot for the next person to get ripped off with. They don't fix anything, they just resell the vehicle, eventually it ends up in one of several pick a part yards, or auctioned off, or both LOL.
I like how your hands work, always were they need to be. Been a mekanik since 1978 mightve learned a few things . Makes me feel good to see we pretty much have the same tools. You are better mech than me which is OK cuz I'm good you're the best.
Sounds crazy but I ran into one that at idle it was fine, drive it and temp would creep up and no heat,,got it hot,raised the hood, revved the motor and the dang bottom radiator hose was sucking together but only after you drove it awhile 😮😅
I don't know of the 200 series but in Australia I remember the launch of the 300 series. Lots of automotive writers questioned the build quality. Not many around these days.
Lol! A friend of mine has a Hemi Ram pickup that needs a few studs and the manifold gaskets replaced. The dealer quoted $800 per side so he asked what I'd charge. I said $1200 per side. He immediately understood that I didn't want to mess with it!
Had a coworker who bought one of these brand new. Dumped it after barely a year and took a massive depreciation loss. I told her she dodged a bullet and that the depreciation loss would be far cheaper than keeping it on the road after the warranty ran out.
'Life's savage' we all have them days Eric. And it's no point going away to evaluate your life choices because deep down, we love it. Great video again though.
Early 3.6L engines had that valve issue, and like most modern engines these suffer when owners neglect their oil changes. Fans are pretty high on these, around 220. Looks like a non OEM cap on the expansion tank, maybe not enough pressure?
I don't know if they ever really fixed it, I own 3, 3.6L Pentastar's now (2014 Journey 135K Miles, replaced all rocker-followers and Cams), (2014 Town & Country, 213K Miles, replaced 1 follower only), and a 2018 Grand Caravan GT 120K Miles, No valvetrain issues) ALL have had oil cooler, thermostat and thermostat xover tube replaced. Honestly, it's an easy job if you have the tools, just fix that tick ASAP and you will save the cams. I bought the Journey used with a known tick, heavily neglected, wiped every cam but 1. I respect these engines immensely, Make good power, very reliable, and the lower-end generally has zero issues, just stuff up-top. FYI: I'm really a Chevy guy (LS) these Mopars are an exception for me.
