coolant goes kaboom

[talonofdeath]

my friend just bought a 1993 VW corrado VR6 yesterday. traded in his old car + some more money for it. we've been to see it several times and talked them down on the amount quite a bit, so my friend finally thought it was a good deal, so he got it.

we knew it had a crack in the exhaust manifold. it was about 30 minutes away from his house on some back roads.

the thing was running friggin fantastic all the way. we get close to his house, so he decides he wants to just drive around a bit, so he gets into a turn lane to wait.
as we are waiting to turn the temp light comes on but the needle is only about half way so he figures since he is in the turn lane he will have to go home a different way (add 30 seconds to normal way) so we do, and the light keeps flashing, and he turns onto his road. he is about one driveway away from his own and KABOOM. nice loud explosion and hood pops up. white smoke pours from every corner of the hood. he swears. parks it on the curb across the street from his house and turns it off. pop the hood and look inside. the orb container that once was i assume the coolant overflow burst at the seems into three pieces and sent water+ coolant EVERYWHERE for some lovely smells and white smoke.

he already had it towed to his mechanic this morning, but i still wanted to get a lot of input from people.

it has aftermarket exhaust and K&N cold air intake. those are all the known performance upgrades. oh and the dealer had to PUT a cat-converter on there. previous owner, uh, left his off.

the car does have a previous salvage title, but has been cleared. when the dealer carfaxed it and found this out he put this info BACK on the title. cracked turn signal on front pass. side. AC condenser looked like it was knocked out of place(AC is incredible btw) and cracks in paint on bumper. all the damage we could find on there. 152K miles.

we did not have the AC on on the way back from the place. we had sunroof open and windows open. no extras were on except for radio.

my guess is that because of the exhaust leak the coolant containter could not maintain a proper temperature and caused it to overheat and being an 11 year old car, its clear plastic toyish looking coolant thing kablooeyed.

that is all the info that springs to mind. ask questions and ill tell you what i know... but since we didnt have the car 1 hour before it broke.. dunno how much i can tell you.

[93scoupe]

have your friend check the thermostat and also the fan relay they are known to go on corrado's