My BA XR8 has started acting strangely.
The other day I as driving in a 90 zone when I noticed my temp gauge was on half and I could hear my thermo fans, I pulled over and while the car was idling I put 2 litres into the radiator.
The next morning I put another 2 litres into the radiator and went to pick a mate up for work.
Temp gauge was normal (quarter) and the car ran well then when I pulled up his driveway the note of the exhaust changed and the car sounded likes she was on 7 cylinders even my mate who knows nothing about cars noticed it, first thing I thought was that id blown a head gasket so I checked the oil (no water) and checked the water (no oil).
Car drove well in 80 and 100 zones but idled like a pig and as very sluggish of the line.
When I got home from work I pulled the radiator out and flushed it checked the hoses and cleaned the scale out of the overflow and filled her with fresh water and coolant.
But the rough idle and sluggish response remain and until the revs and speed pick up she sound like she Is on 7 cylinders and runs like a pig.
I checked the coils but none seem to be the culprit.
Any idea?

is your car on gas? might be simple as a faulty vacuum line is the cause of your rough idling. as for you coolant leak i would be getting it up to operating temp and looking around the engine bay with a tourch to see right in under the block at the heater hoses and everything. A leak that bad will show up visually somewhere.

Not knowing if you are on gas or not i might be wasting time trying this but your gas converter could be f**k and feeding your engine with coolant that would explain the rough idol and the water loss. And I am being serious, it happened to me, and it ended up seizing my engine!

If your not on gas just check your vac lines for cracks, splits or flared ends.

Last edited by XR-Lane on Sat Sep 19, 2009 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

Car runs on petrol only.
There are no visible coolant leaks.
Still hunting for that miss.

checked all your leads and plugs?

Sound like a coil pack get the engine warm and pull one lead off ar a time at the coil pack and check the spark if one of the sparks r low the coil pck is faulty . Go to a raditor plce and get the cooling system pressure tested


gassa

I have checked the coils leads and plugs, I am beginning to think these are to unrelated problems that have occurred at the same time.
Pressure in the radiator dose seem to be a issue but I am not experiencing any cooling problems now, I idled her in the driveway for about 30 min on a nice Darwin day and the gauge did not move of quarter.
Now I am no concentrating on that miss.

Smacks of a head gasket to me mate.

It could just be a gasket breach straight into the cylinder with out going near an oil gallery. This would allow coolant into the combustion chamber, but next to no oil into the coolant. And with the design of the cooling system on late model falcons, I wouldn't expect too much oil to make it's way into the header tank anyway!!

The coolant just vaporises into the exhaust gasses (hence drop in coolant).

This would also (most likely) explain the dodgy idle as the coolant is causing dodgy combustion in that cylinder. At revs, the misfire issue can tend to go away or at least become far less noticeable.

Considering the two things have happened pretty much simultaneously, you've gotta think they are pretty closely related!!

Of course, now that one of your symptoms has pretty much vanished, I could be well off the mark, but how often to symptoms in cars disappear for a while before rearing their ugly head again!!

I would be getting an exhaust gas check done on your coolant.

coolant leak wil be from the two o rings in the thermostat housong pipe. The black one that splits into two and goes from one bank to the other. These always leak.

As for miss, could be loose or boken tone wheel on crank.