Cafe Mocha in Radiator!?!?

[Grug]

Ok, my wife drove our '98 Caravan home and said it acted kinda' jerky accelerating from stop signs. When she got home, the radiator coolant reservoir overflowed what looked like brown cafe mocha all over the driveway! I checked the rad, it's full of the stuff! And here's the strange thing...the transmission seems to be full of it, too! (The only reason I happened to check the transmission is because of what she said happened at the stop signs).

What's going on?

[carcarcar]

bad bad news for your car. the radiator broke, allowing engine coolant to mix with transmission fluid. this then caused the engine to overheat, blowing the head gasket. The 'cafe mocha' is oil that mixed with the coolant and trans fluid. you will most likley need a new transmission, radiator, and head gasket at least. you may even need a new engine. you should just junk the car and buy an import. sorry.

[Grug]

Is there any way to easily check if the head gasket is blown. The only reason I'm asking is because the engine seemed hot, but not super hot. My wife had only driven the van about 5-6 kilometres (at about 60-70 km/h) until she got home.

She said the transmission acted fine for the rest of the trip home other than those two jerky movements at the stop signs.

[mmont0]

When was the last time the radiator fluid was changed? It might just be that your fluid has turned brown due to not changing it. I believe that the caravans use the standard coolant which needs to be flushed about every 30k miles and refilled with fresh coolant. The engine coolant might be too old and is causing the van to get hotter than usual.

The overflow of the reservoir is interesting and I have not run into this problem before.

If you haven't changed the fluid recently, just try that and see if that fixes the problem.