SR20DET puzzling coolant burning problems....

[yitzac1990]

my SR has been going through some coolant problems for a while now, basically since my full rebuild. if its been sitting overnight and is completely cold, it'll start up fine, no smoke or anything. Then once it warms up and I run it (like at a drift event), if I shut it off and turn it back on in a bit, white smoke (burning coolant for sure) will come out of the exhaust. But, its only sometimes. and when it does, its either a few puffs of smoke, or enough smoke to fill my entire 2 car garage full. I have NO idea what it could be. after I start it, and let the smoke stop, the car runs great. But when I run the car hard (like during a drift run), I will get droplets of coolant on my windshield (comes through the vented hood), so coolant is leaking from somewhere. and sometimes the coolant overflow tank cap will pop completely off. If I take the cap off at idle, sometimes there are bubbles coming up (which would suggest a bad HG), but sometimes there are no bubbles, and sometimes there are only bubbles over a certain RPM.

Im sure im leaving some details out, but yeah, this is bugging the crap out of me. just put in a brand new Mishimoto radiator, too. Any help is appreciated!

redtop s13 sr
CP 90mm pistons
Darton iron sleeves
Mazworx headgasket (Power Enterprises)
eagle rods
ARP hardware everywhere
new bearings everywhere
Tomei solid head setup with 270 cams
GT28 turbo with SS lines (still bottom mount), 16 psi
750cc injectors
blah blah blah

[PovertyDrifter]

Spend $40-60 and buy a cylinder leak down tester. test each cylinder and look and listen for air coming out of the intake, exhaust, radiator, and oil fill. It will also give you a compression reference.

[daryl337]

Sounds to me like you have a head and/or headgasket issue.

You may have lifted the head (unsure since you said arp bolts everywhere) or simply got it hot and warped it.

Gas into the reservoir is at the very least a head gasket issue - those are your combustion chamber pressures pressurizing your cooling system. It could be a cracked head/block too - as cracks generally get worse after the engine warms up.

[jr_ss]

By a hydrocarbon test from Napa, Autozone or whatever and test your coolant. Proceed from there.

[yitzac1990]

thanks for the info guys. i was actually gonna get a leak down tester, just have been real busy and haven't gotten around to it yet. Wanted to get a thread started anyways to see what people may think. I may go ahead and try to re-torque my head studs, I haven't done that since rebuild. This is because I have heard to do it from some friends, and I have also heard from some friends that they never re-torqued after a fresh rebuild and they never had problems.