thanks for all the good input.

it is 3 hrs away from me at the dealer, needed other stuff done to it.

anyway, I told them I am not doing heater core.........kyle is the tech and he is thorough. he spent all day today directly flushing the ***** out of the heater core, he said it was puking like hell..........no more gushing sound and he said it is on its way to running clean again.

I told them I want to have it power flushed one more time for good measure.

the hoses actually seem to be in really good shape, it has new rad cap, new t-stat, but here is the deal with the water pump:

works fine, ok yeah that is a good assessment..........well it had a dealer replace t-belt at 60k miles; they didn't replace pump then, just inspected it..........it now has 80k on it, so...

the pump has 80k on it
the t-belt has 20k on it

I don't really want to invest all that money to get water pump replaced since t-belt doesn't need it.

I will have to roll my dice on the pump and hope it lasts another 40k miles.....

In my experience the Mitsu OEM lasts about 90K give or take. Keep a watchfull eye on it. Another 40K, thats a tall order. Should have done it along with the belt 20K ago.

i agree, however it was the previous owner, not me; I even called the dealership it was done at to verify, and sure enough, they only go by the book and it calls for

1. inspection at 60k
2. replacement at 120k

My waterpump died at 105k. I will be changing at 60k on all ours going forward.

just curious but what happens when it dies? does it mess up the t-belt?

Overheats the engine if you don't catch it when it happens. Bye bye headgaskets. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />

well not sure if this is just good luck or what, but we had a 91 montero that we didn't even change the air filter in until it 125k miles on it...............then after it proved itself my dad finally got t-belt water pump and everything else done on it......drove it another 100k miles and then my brother smashed it into a deer.

anyway, that water pump lasted 125k miles.

I will keep my eye on it, but it just doesn't make sense to me to tear it down all the way to the water pump with a t-belt that only has 20k on it just b/c the pump could go bad.

the problem seems to be solved with the cooling system though. they disconnected heater core at fire wall and power flushed it strong both ways with a heavy duty cleaner, no gushing sound now.

I suppose b/c of the restriction in the heater core, that is where the noice was coming from in addition to more air being trapped b/c of the restrictions. hopefully it will behave itself now. I will keep a more watchful eye on the over flow bottle and if i see it starting to get sediment on the bottom again, it will get another power flush; hopefully most of it is out and that won't happen to me again.

thanks again to all who gave such good input.

on a lighter note, I will be installing a hot water heat exchanger on my 97SR to have hot water when camping...........can anyone confirm if the gen II setup has a valve inline with the heater core hoses or is it a continuous flow system that has a baffle on the air duct instead? that little tid bit of info will dictate how I install the hot water heat exchanger (series or parrelel) with the heater core.

It will if it takes out your heads etc. because you accidentally didn't see the temp spike up until it was too late. I seriously think you're being 'penny wise, pound foolish' here & I'd hate to say 'I told you so' but I probably would out of frustration if it ever happened (knock on wood).



Note that the gushing sound is caused by air in the system. Although it could be caused by the blockage creating an air pocket, there are other things that can cause you to have excess air. It could be caused by lost coolant via the weep hole in water pump or through a faulty water pump o-ring (assuming it's same design as gen I v6)?



Hmmm good question. As you probably know, Lloyd has one on his Gen I. I never heard him mention one in his gen II but you never know.

Ummm... if your pump goes, usually your belt goes and your valves bend and your gaskets and well... just bad things happen. my friend found out with his 92 Diamante. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />

Good point. Is this an interference engine? On my Gen I v6 it's not, but my Gen II 3.5LDOHC it is. If yours is an interference motor, then this could be a catastrophic failure if/when it happens. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />