Mysterious Leak

[NavyWife424]

I have just replaced the belt and a tensioner pulley. It still doesn't sound right to me kind of like something is too tight or rubbing. But I haven't driven the car much in the last 10 days of having the van back from the belt/pulley repair and now I have a leak under the middle of the vehicle towards the passenger side by a pan looking item. The fluid is redish which leads me to think it is the DexII coolant. I am not sure where to start looking since I asked Pep Boys to look at everything and tell me if there were any other problems and they said everything was fine. When I popped the hood the rubber cauling wasn't put back right which makes me feel like I was a rush put it back together and get it out the door. Any suiggestions would be very apreciated.

[maxwedge]

Red could be trans fluid or coolant, see if it is oily or watery. What year what engine, try to post pertinent info. Take it back and address your issues with Pep Boys.

[NavyWife424]

Well I have a 1999 Silhouette with 81,000 miles the engine is a 3.4. I took her back to pep boys where the say the leak is my intake manifold gasket and will run me 950.00 for gasket, thermostat and labor. I went to meineke for a second opinion and they could not find the intake manifold gasket. They spent forever looking at her and couldn't find any leaks or issues at 15 and 20 foot pounds of pressure. The mechanic took off the pcv and was looking in it and notice my oil was milky looking. I checked the mail this morning before I took it to pep boys and it didn't look milky at all. The odd thing is the car doesn't overheat and my coolant light only comes on intermittenly. He quoted me 1850.00 roughly for the head gasket job but said he has know the local areas to do orwork and get in to the job and then say ooops its this sorry you will need to shell out more money. So Since I am not overheating, smoking or running badly he is going to do a full oil change and flush the system to see if maybe they added dirty oil or water this morning. Does this sound reasonable to any of you? It just seems awfully early to have a head gasket problem and none of the effects of a gasket gone bad. Thank you for your two cents ahead of time.

[maxwedge]

Where is the fluid you saw under the car coming from, do you loose coolant periodically, if so this indicates a leak of course, intake manifold gasket problems are common on this engine, one of the first indicators is milky intermix in the oil. Only proper on site diagnosis will revea the root problem here.

[NavyWife424]

We did an oil flush and the problem appears to have gone away for the mean time. The mechanic is checking it again on Wednesday but the oil is not milky now. He believes the shop in question may have added water to give the appearance of a blown head gasket since there are no other signs of a bad head gasket or an intake gasket. I do realize that nothing beats an onsite diagnosis but getting opinions from others who have gone through this give a person a sense of what is happening and a better undertsanding of what to be cautious of or not. Thank you for your guidance towards continued mechanical service.

The leak is on the front passenger side of the engine, it is a red fluid as I styated in my original post. But has since disappeared and has not been back all day. But again taking it back to pep boys for proper diagnosis and getting a response that it is an intake manifold gasket and then taking it for a second opinion and getting told no it holds 15-20 pounds of pressure and all looks ok until the checked the oil a third time and say wait it may very well be a head gasket is also very concerning. Which is why I thought I would try with the people and professionals here.

[maxwedge]

There is no concrete answer here especially based on the now more complex issue of possible tampering and fraud on the part of Pep Boys, again a leaking intake gasket may pass a pressure test one time and not another, either way both these condions would cause an externally untraceable coolant leak. keep you eye on the coolant jar getting low, remember when cold it is down some and comes up when hot, maybe make your own marks on it for reference,. Good Luck