Yet Another Ford Cooling System Issue

[z0rbadelic]

Greeting to everyone on this most joyous of holiday seasons. Like many others that are thoroughly entrenched in the deep recesses of a rapidly dwindling middle class, I find myself over extended and broke after doing my part to keep the economy rolling. But enough of my babbling silliness, I am a long time reader of this forum and from time to time have been fortunate enough to find wonderfully articulated answers that allowed me to keep my fleet of Fords running for many years. I am a home mechanic by necessity and have worked on Fords even when they had Mazda emblems on them. I have rarely if ever been in a position to purchase a new vehicle, so I usually end up owning a Ford with more than 50,000 miles on it, and bite my nails to the quick when something goes wrong with one of them.

Because of my experience with such worn vehicles, I am no stranger to some of the, less than intelligent designs that Ford has bestowed upon us mechanically inclined, the latest of which I hope to partition some advice from you, the kind reader.

Allow me to start off with the type of Ford vehicle in question. I have a 2002 Ford Explorer Limited Edition with a 4.6L SOHC V8 2 Valve engine. I bought the vehicle used with about 85,000 miles on it, and it currently has 158,000 miles on it. Everything I seem to read about this year and model seems to make me feel like a sucker for buying it after the fact.
As far as the maintenance I have performed on this vehicle is has been very light compared to the other Fords I have owned (94 Taurus, 96 Windstar, 03 Focus, and a 02 Taurus). I change the oil every 3 or 4k, top the fluids off as necessary and have gone through quite a few tires on the front of the vehicle.

The heaviest work I have performed on this vehicle is the following
1. Changed front bearing, sway bar links, and brakes
2. Drained Transmission pan and changed filter
3. Changed Alternator
4. Changed bad ignition coil pack

Just recently I replaced the two front tires. When I went to pick the vehicle up the mechanic informed me that the ball joints looked bad and that I should probably get that addressed. After a little diagnosis it appeared that the upper ball joints were all dried out and cracked. Thankfully the lower ones are in good condition. So I ordered new upper control arms with ball joints in them. That is on my list of things to do but NOT why I am writing this.

The problem that I am getting to here is one that the vehicle has had since the “extended” warranty expired (Yeah I know, I’m a sucker). FORD COOLING SYSTEMS! I am not sure how that rolls off the tongue for some folks, but for me it is a pain point. EVERY Ford I have owned has had some kind of cooling system problem. I suppose sometime back in the 90’s Ford decided to stop making things out of metal and opted to use plastic with a limited lifespan on it. I have dealt with shatters, cracks, and bursts on all of my Fords which all ended in some sort of geyser of coolant being sprayed all over the place. However the Explorer is different. Nothing so violent ever came from the Explorer, but for the past couple of years now I have had to religiously top the coolant bottle off every week. Every Sunday for the past couple of years I have had to put on average a cup of coolant in the overflow tank to maintain the fluid levels.

I have tried to do some reading on this, and there are a lot of different answers but nothing that I can definitely put my thumb on. I do not see any coolant leaking anywhere, and for the most part I cannot smell any coolant burning. The oil pan level seems to be constant but from time to time the cap on the neck where you fill the oil sometimes gets a tan colored sludge on it. I clean it off as best that I can and make sure to use engine flush at every oil change. Can anyone advise on this issue? I had considered changing the intake manifold in the off chance that there might be a micro fracture in it and coolant is dripping down into the crankcase, or perhaps the plastic is warped somewhere? Are there any home mechanic type tests I can perform to see if it is the manifold of if my head gasket is shot? I would like to fix this if it does not cost too much money and does not take the vehicle out of commission for too long, otherwise I will just have to ride this beast until it dies.

Please help, I have some time off over the holidays and I hope to change both front upper control arms and put in new plugs and coils.

Thanks
Mike T.

 

[lincolnshibuya]

Try owning a lincoln ls and you could probably say that what you have in the explorer is nothing. The cooling system in the LS is by far the worst ever designed by both Jaguar and Ford engineers, I assume they designed it during St Patrick's day overnight.

I started to have that mysterious leak in my coolant around 80k on my Mountaineer and it was caused by the plastic intake manifold. If yours is still original it's time to replace it.

I have 148k now on my mountaineer and I was impressed that I don't have to replace the hoses yet or the clutch fan.

If you have a bmw you are required to replace all the cooling parts before 100k otherwise you'll be in big trouble since those are all plastic and will surely fail. On the lincoln ls when things starts to overheat, it's going to be complicated to diagnose it because the coolant tank (which is hidden) could have cracks (a slow leak) and or the hoses (replace them all since you can't tell) and worst the hydraulic fan (on 1st gen) Bleeding air is also different among other cars I own which I considered very stupid. The car is so dirt cheap but it looks and drive nice if it's working, just don't own it if you rely on dealership or mechanic for the fixes.