Metal shards in my coolant?

[zytoun395]

Whatsup fellow r3vers??

I will preface this by saying im totally new to the car mechanic world, Ive always been interested in cars forever so I got my 89 325iX knowing it would break so I could fix it

This past weekend I was driving home to San Luis Obispo from the bay when all of a sudden my temp gauge went through the roof. I pulled over and opened the hood to find coolant everywhere. Initially i thought maybe one of the hoses melted or something so I drove a mile or so watching the gauge, got some coolant and topped it off.

I drove another 30 miles or so noticing that if I was going slow the gauge would go up, but at freeway speeds the airflow kept the engine cool and the needle in the middle. So I cruised along in 5th at about 2000 rpms.

Then it got worse....

I pulled over again after the needle went up to find coolant gushing from what seemed like the fan. I called AAA and got towed the last 70 miles back home.

After doing research I thought maybe the impeller on my water pump broke because the oem ones were plastic and I heard a rattling sound coming from near the crank shaft (later realized it was behind the fan clutch, aka water pump). So I jacked her up, drained the coolant to find shards of (what i thought) were plastic in there! Alas im right! So i pulled of the radiator and belts and all that jazz...get to the pump and when I pull it i realize its a steel pump....??? now im not sure where to go from here.

My worst fear is that I blew a head gasket. I did find trace amount of oil in my coolant but there's a leak somewhere and oil is all over the block so I thought more than likely some of it just dripped into my catch.


here are the shards


heres my impeller, if you look you can see there is a swirl scratch into it. also worth mentioning there is a good amount of play in it so im gunna replace it anyway.


heres the new pump i bought for comparison

[101]

The water pump is really the only moving part in the cooling circuit. It sure sounds like the impeller shaft bearing self destructed and filled the circuit with metal shrapnel.

I'll let others chime in as to the best way to flush the metal out of the system. That is necessary to prevent the new pump from ingesting the leftover metal bits and starting the cycle all over again.

[dnguyen1963]

This is bad if you have that much metal shards in the coolant. It is likely that your whole system is contaminated with metal bits. Your heater core and radiator is probably filled with them. Disconnect all the coolant hoses,heater hoses, t-stat, engine drain plug, then connect a garden hose to one of the heater hoses and try to flush out as much as you can. You can try to back-flush the heater core and radiator, but if it were me I would get all new parts. Good luck.

[uturn]

Get an ir gun and shoot the temps on the radiator. It's probably clogged up and no amount of flushing will unclog it. You'll end up breaking the hose connection anyway as they get brittle. Be sure to change the thermostat too just as a maintenance item. Good luck.

[Supratreo]

i think the garden hose idea would be your best bet. try to get it from every hose you can access. after you get it going you might want to do another D&R to see if anymore comes out.

[zytoun395]

This is bad if you have that much metal shards in the coolant. It is likely that your whole system is contaminated with metal bits. Your heater core and radiator is probably filled with them. Disconnect all the coolant hoses,heater hoses, t-stat, engine drain plug, then connect a garden hose to one of the heater hoses and try to flush out as much as you can. You can try to back-flush the heater core and radiator, but if it were me I would get all new parts. Good luck.

Garden hose was my first thought as well. I need my car for work so I'm thinking I'm going to remove the heater core and plug those hoses until my new heater core comes in.

The water pump is really the only moving part in the cooling circuit. It sure sounds like the impeller shaft bearing self destructed and filled the circuit with metal shrapnel.

I'll let others chime in as to the best way to flush the metal out of the system. That is necessary to prevent the new pump from ingesting the leftover metal bits and starting the cycle all over again.

One concern I have is that whatever the impeller was rubbing up against to shave off all that metal might be damaged, are there any other vulnerable parts in the water pump housing that could either be damaged or cause a leak in the system?

I should mention that pulling all the radiator hoses off I didn't see any metal shards in any of those hoses, nor notice any metal shards when draining the radiator. Only the engine plug. Ill flush it with a hose just to be safe but if its all good under the hood ill probably keep my radiator. Replacing the tstat for sure though!

Thanks guys!

[TobyB]

Give it a good flush (pull the block drain, on the back of the engine down below the exhaust
manifold), put on a new water pump, and you should be ok.
The water pump is pretty tough, and metal sinks, so it won't ingest enough to hurt itself.

Do look at the back side of the pump- if the bearings shat, the impeller may have ground
away at the pump housing, and it may not be easy to see. And I agree- check the front
of the block, just to make sure it didn't go boring into the #1 cylinder. But from the
looks of the impeller, it didn't...

Your coolant looks green, so the gasket probably survived.

No sweat.

t