LIM coolant elbow!

well i got er ALL tidy'd up and runs like glass! perfect but of course the trannies still dropped:( than boom coolant dumps on the ground and its coming from the coolant elbow! is there anyway to replace that without removing the LIM?

i removed mine at the scrap yard wile it was on the car,

palermocorey90 wrote:

i removed mine at the scrap yard wile it was on the car,

cool....... isnt that lame how it goes to the alternator bracket???? and how would i get the new one in?? plus i cant find a replacement one!

http://www.wbodystore.com/grandprix/coolant-elbows-pair-p-171.html

I have heard that you can also get the coolant elbow at Autozone. It should be in the help section with a part number 47065.

You can swap it with 3 quick bolts and a belt.

Pull the belt off the accessories and feel around your alternator bracket. 3 15mm bolts should be holding it on. (disconnect batter and I usually leave the alt in the bracket, although removing it may make alignment easier.

BillBoost37 wrote:

You can swap it with 3 quick bolts and a belt.

Pull the belt off the accessories and feel around your alternator bracket. 3 15mm bolts should be holding it on. (disconnect batter and I usually leave the alt in the bracket, although removing it may make alignment easier.

sweet MAN!!!!!!!!! i work quite a bit........ so im gonnna set aside 1 hour one of these days to do it....... this is the ONLY thing holding me back from getting my tranny fixed

Found a leak today. This is where is it located


This is what is leaking..

What exactly is this and how do you go about changing it?

That is the plastic coolant elbow. They are pretty cheap, a few bucks at most parts stores. Changing them can be a pain. I replaced mine when I changed my lower intake manifold gaskets. I have read that it can be changed by removing either the alternator bracket or water pump, not 100% sure. Hopefully someone who has done this will stop by and make a suggestion.

I was hoping it wasnt much to change. Removing the water pump means taking off the motor mount and everything else again. Just did that today.

Joby70739 wrote:

I was hoping it wasnt much to change. Removing the water pump means taking off the motor mount and everything else again. Just did that today.

David did say it was a pain.

I'm getting the impresion your car skipped/missed a few maintenance trips before you got it. Were there any service records at all?

Albertj

That's most likely how it got damaged. They get quite brittle with age and many people damage them when working on the alternator bracket or when changing the lower intake manifold.

It can be quite unpleasant to change, but you can do it by removing the alternator bracket. Bill has done it without removing the alternator form the bracket, but note he has a Bonneville. You can find his post, as well as the HELP! p/n for the coolant elbow here. This should give you a very good idea of how the elbow is lodged in there and help visualize what Bill is talking about. Heed his advice about disconnecting the neg battery cable.




While you are fixing it, do NOT damage the vacuum fitting above it. It is identified with an X in this picture. Nobody makes a rubber fitting of the right size. If in the future you end up doing your intake manifold, try to remember ->NOT<- to pull this fitting out from the manifold, or you will rip the fitting in half... remove the two plastic tubes from the fitting, and not the fitting from the manifold.

So that's where all that coolant is going... I was getting tired of checking it all the time...

albertj wrote:

Joby70739 wrote:

I was hoping it wasnt much to change. Removing the water pump means taking off the motor mount and everything else again. Just did that today.

David did say it was a pain.

I'm getting the impresion your car skipped/missed a few maintenance trips before you got it. Were there any service records at all?

Albertj

Yea I would say so. And no there were no service records. When I bought the car I found it for $2200.00 with 143,000 miles on it 2 years ago. These are the first problems I have had. This leak, changing the water pump a while back, the pulley breaking on my son the other night and the drivers side air/heat not blowing right(more like outside temp air coming in). Oh and the passenger floor getting wet.(I already checked the drain plug) so I would say I've gotten off pretty easy so far. In a few months I'm putting it in the shop for a complete over haul before totally handing it over to my 18 yr old. Thinking about upgrading to a S4 SC but I am still undecided on that.

You do not need to remove the water pump, but you do need to take the alternator off. It's the alternator bracket/tensioner assembly that needs to come off to get at this elbow. They are readily available at most auto parts chains, although in the 'Help' or Dorman boxes they often come with another elbow that we don't need (fits Grand Prixs that have a different tensioner assembly)

Thanks I was gonna check as soon as it warms up some today to see what I had to take off. I just hate to have to take the belt off again after tearing down the whole side to change the Pulley yesterday. But it has to be done before summer hits here in Louisiana because of how hot it gets here.

Joby70739 wrote:

albertj wrote:

Joby70739 wrote:

I was hoping it wasnt much to change. Removing the water pump means taking off the motor mount and everything else again. Just did that today.

David did say it was a pain.

I'm getting the impresion your car skipped/missed a few maintenance trips before you got it. Were there any service records at all?

Albertj

Yea I would say so. And no there were no service records. When I bought the car I found it for $2200.00 with 143,000 miles on it 2 years ago. These are the first problems I have had. This leak, changing the water pump a while back, the pulley breaking on my son the other night and the drivers side air/heat not blowing right(more like outside temp air coming in). Oh and the passenger floor getting wet.(I already checked the drain plug) so I would say I've gotten off pretty easy so far. In a few months I'm putting it in the shop for a complete over haul before totally handing it over to my 18 yr old. Thinking about upgrading to a S4 SC but I am still undecided on that.

Okay I understand better. Here are some things that have helped me over teh years with my Riv. THey are not in any order of importance, but I hope you (and tohers) find them helpful. THe idea is that I am not 100% successful at this but I try to plan maintenance, putting things on my list of stuff to get/do and get a replacement part or schedule shop time when convenient. That way the car is not out of commission at a time I ought to be driving it.

1) When everything is running right, idle is rock steady and there ar eno squeaks growls groans or whistles. The idle squeaks I have had have been either a pulley dying or the alternator bearing dying. I busted a supercharger belt and an accessory belt before I got the point - point being that if I hear a squeeak or chirp at idle, next time I am under the hood I take a wrench, slip off a tensioner and turn pulleys until I find the squeaker. They squeak *long* before they go.

2) Some people complain about the pink Dexcool coolant. I have no problems with it after almost 220,000 miles. I suspect the problems some people have with it are related to the mineral or chemical content of the water they mix it with, At 150,000-ish miles you are due for a coolant change. If you are still using Dexcool by allmeans continue but consider either buying the pre-mix or getting distilled water (distilled water is cheap in plastic bottles at WalMart for instance) to mix it. OR you could consider doing what I have done - I use condensate water from a dehumidifier or air conditioner (depending on season, the silly thing is running anyway...)

3) If you ever have the transmission out, at this mileage, consider replacing the engine rear main seal with a high-quality Timken or some such.

4) Towards 200,000 miles watch for evidence (oil track under the hood) of leaking front seals and replace accordingly. I had the local dealer mechanic replace my front cam seal, it was not very expensive leading me to think I shoulda done it myself - car was in shop for other reasons though so I had him do it to cut my downtime.

5) If you can help it, never drive with unbalanced wheels.

Hmmm...

I think I will start a couple new threads. One, 'maintenance lessons" and the other 'upgrade lessons.' They could get interesting.

Albertj

The issue with Dexcool was the original formula itself, not the water added to it. The first incarnation of Dexcool did NOT like when air of any sort was introduced into the system, it was a major catalyst for forming the brown deposits and build up, as well as aiding in it to eat seals and gaskets. In fact, I vaguely remember there being a GM TSB about having the tech over-fill the recovery bottle to help prevent air from being drawn into the system.

The newer formulas do not have such an issue and are much more seal/gasket friendly.

BrianEsser wrote:

The issue with Dexcool was the original formula itself, not the water added to it. The first incarnation of Dexcool did NOT like when air of any sort was introduced into the system, it was a major catalyst for forming the brown deposits and build up, as well as aiding in it to eat seals and gaskets. In fact, I vaguely remember there being a GM TSB about having the tech over-fill the recovery bottle to help prevent air from being drawn into the system.

The newer formulas do not have such an issue and are much more seal/gasket friendly.

Thanks, that helps. The Dexcool issue has been discussed on this board but up to now all we had were opinions (Dexcool rules/sucks) and empirical hypotheses (my distilled water hypothesis for instance) that did not "hold water" so to speak.

We do know that air in the system can be the sole cause of overheating.

Albertj

IMHO and no ones ever been able to prove it one way or the other, I think the lubricant additive they used in the original Dexcool also played a part in it.

I personally have read many different write ups regarding Dexcool over the past several years and it became hard to know what is speculation and what is good science.
I continue to use Dexcool with distilled water to make my batches of 50/50. Heck the distilled water cant hurt, especially if your municipal water has a lot of minerals in it that your not aware of. For less than a dollar a gallon for distilled water it's no big deal. I always have a gallon or so of distilled water in the garage for the many batteries that I have that require maintenance.
Because of all the hysteria over the years about Dexcool and specifically the 3800 LIM gasket failures that some attribute to Dexcool, I now drain and flush the system every other fall and keep the cooling system clean and make sure I have bleed all of the air out of the cooling system before continuing on with my fall maintenance program.
I am probably doing what you might call "overkill maintenance" but I have yet to have any LIM gasket problems and they are original with 107K miles.
But, being anal as i am about preventive maintenance, i am scheduling to do a LIM gasket change this year with the newer Aluminum gaskets just because they are available and are recommended. (And I also have another LIM and GEN V that has been on the shelf too long and waiting to be installed) But nothing wrong with preventing a possible problem either way.
I would recommend to anyone with 100K or more to replace LIM gaskets with the newer ones (alum) just as a preventive maintenance issue. Especially if you don't know the history of preventive maintenance on your car. i.e. Cooling System flushes and coolant change intervals.

Nothing wrong with that. I am constantly looking over my vehicle for current or future issues.

Okay I got this elbow off, having to dig out what broke. Problem is now what? I cant get the new elbow in. Does the pulley assembly itself have to come off since the elbow goes in it?

As Jason and Deekster said, you do have to remove (the negative cable,) the alternator, the metal heater hoses from the alternator bracket, and then the alternator bracket itself... because some lunatic engineer decided that combining the bracket, the tensioner and the heater passages was a great idea!

I imagine you should also have a new set of O-rings before you start, as well.

What's really annoying is that I can't seem to find any mention of that elbow in the FSM...

The elbow came with new O rings. The bracket is the tensioner assembly I got halfway threw and stopped because it got dark. I have 1 bolt left then the "bracket" is off. I olny need it back move a little to put the new elbow in so the metal hose can probably stay just needing a few cm of to line everything back up.