Hello all and help? '92 PA coolant elbow
 

Hello all, Glad to fine this forum. Hope your rides are all funtioning well. My '92 Park Avenue is the best car I have ever owned. I have 4 others and except for my aerostar van they have had their share of major problems. Not the PA it runs smooth and since '94 when I bought it, I have only put about 1000 bucks into it for repair work. It has 142.000 miles and smooth as silk still today. I started getting the brown creem collecting in the overflow tank and loosing coolant so I changed the intake manifold gasket hopeing it is not a head gasget. Will have to give it a few miles to see if the brown creem comes back but in the meantime, after all was put back together I had a leak in the metal cooling elbow pipe. I thought it was the o ring so replaced it and it still leaks. I read on the internet that the metal pipe (yes mine is metal as is the top intake manifold) might be split under the o ring (very thin in this area). Also my pipe does not go into the tension pully for cooling. The dealer or any auto parts stores I have called does not carry this part. I wonder if any of you know a source for a new, or a fix for a split pipe? I am just now going to get going on removeing the pipe again. Thanks in advance for any info or help, I don't want to give this car up even if I find out the head gaskets are the problem.

Thanks a million Kerry

Take a look at www.rockauto.com Inspect the part, you should see a crack. Also make sure it's clean before you put the O ring on. Also lube the O ring up real good before it goes in. Wiggle it a bit. The gunk your dealing with tells me air got in to the cooling system. Flush it real good and replace with fresh coolant.

Thanks for the info Dan. Unfortunatly like the dealer, rockauto doesn't have the part. If I cannot fix the pipe, I may remove the intake and tap a thread into the outlet hole and screw in a 90 degree brass fitting connected to a heater hose.
After reading through other threads I do not think I have a blown head gasket as the exhaust is invisable and no sweet smell coming from the tail pipe.

Don't see many blown head gaskets. You may have to go to a salvage yard, pick and pull, and find the part you need.

Yea the wrecking yard is a good option. If I can't fix the pipe I will call a few yards before tapping the outlet hole.
Even with a metal upper intake and metal elbow pipe on my '92 I am having the same trouble as all the people with plastic parts, although it did go 17 years before happening....off to pull the pipe again, take care out there......

Progress report on metal elbow pipe... After pulling the pipe a second time I checked the pipe very closely and could not find a leak. I even put it in water and pressurized it and no bubbles came out. I had some very old form-a-gasket in a bottle and doped up the pipe end,added a new slightly thinner o ring, put everything back, let the sealer dry a day and just now got back from checking it after a long ride and cool down period. Thankfully no leak. But I will keep and eye on it. The cars ideling speed seems to go up and down a bit after all this repair work but I am hopeing the cars computer will get things worked out, also I just tried my cruise control and the light comes on but it does not work. Must be a vacuume hose or something.

should be a cable to the tb for it that you may have forgot to hook back up, or vac line to the cc actuator

Thanks I will check both those out also. I did remember when putting vac lines back there was one very tiny one that comes off the T B housing and it has a 90 degree end on it and seemed to want to go toward the firewall. I looked for a long time and found a very small plastic nipple coming out of a box on the firwall but the little hose elbow's I D was too big for it's O D so I found a piece of old cloth covered tubing (old vw style hose) for a coupler interface that seemed to fit both but now I think with what your saying it could be the coupler is not a tight enough fit. I wonder if when I pulled the original 90 degree elbow off, and it was really on there, I lost something and that is why it would not fit.
Thanks everybody for your help once again. Hope all is well with you in G M land! P S have you utubed any Garnd National twin turbo's going down the drag strip in 9 seconds or less? quite amazing!