Burglar - where on the intake is YOUR leak?
Stallion:
Be careful if your leak ends up being a kind only a sealant can quickly work on. The sealants
do generally work quite well, especially the liquid ones with aluminum colored slurries. There are tons of horror stories about them clogging up cooling systems however, expecailly old, dirty ones. I have yet to experience this myself, but have always been afraid of it. Worse, if your leak is in a freeze plug or head gasket, if you don't rplace the defective part, you risk a catastrophic failure later a sealant only "put a patch" on. Some people will purge their cooling systems
after successfully using a sealant, just to be sure. (Most of the directions on them recommend doing this
before, if at all possible.)
All this of course depends on where your leak is at though, of course, at you may have nothing that wrong.
BTW, if you do need to replace a water pump, for example, it's also a good idea if you have the money to change any of the hoses - water, vacuum and fuel - that you have to disconnect to get the job done. Those hoses should be changed fairly frequently anyhow, so it makes sense to not put back on old ones, especailly since the condition of the car is new to you. It's not that expensive and it kills three or four flying rats with one or two stones.
Burglar:
I've had nearly every leak except a freeze plug leak on this thing already (which is scheduled I believe in early April, somewhere between here and Kentucky...
)
Mine right now is the SS radiator hose I put on - which HAS lessened to nothing. I still am going to put sealant on the SS-to-adapter dealy ends before I cut it to it's proper length and change the bottom one to that. What that leak used to be on mine was two-fold:
two nice chrome-plated O-ringed thermostat housings (differnt brands) that, because they were made of some inappropriate non-steel, non-aluminum alloy WARPED in just weeks... AND....
....leaks around the driver side water port intake bolts because inadequate/inappropriate sealant was used when they put on the Edelbrock Performer.
The former I fixed by switching to a good 'ole
cast iron OEM Chevy water neck, painted Chevy orange (actually Hemi Orange, because I had a full can of that! :L ) I had to grind down one of the support webs a bit to get it to use the same bolts, because I was too cheap to go get a few more 12-point 3/8" bolts like the rest of the intake now has. That stopped that leak. Sometime later I will replace it with some genuine chrome plated ALUMINUM number from some known manufacturer, but it works, so who cares?
The later I fixed when I plucked the intake looking for oil and vacuum leaks. The center two bolts on the intake of small blocks are famous for oozing oil, as is the fore and especially aft edges if you use the provided little gaskets instead of a HBOS (Humongous Blob Of Sealant.) I found an inch of vacuum or so and stopped those oil leaks as well as the water passage leaks with generous amounts of some O2 sensor safe silite. I picked a silver type normally for imports so it would blend with the aluminum better.
I just found a heater core leak I addressed two ways - a way I hate and a safe way. Forget it if you think I ripped out the heater core of a daily driver with no pre-planning!
I used water system sealant. That always gives me the willies, waiting for it to find a restricted area in the system to clog... I also installed two manual cutoffs to be able to quickly isolate the system if it blows like one did just last year on me on another car.
