Thermostat housing decayed into hard white powder !

DB7178

MEMBER
1991 FORD CROWN VICTORIA
150,000 MILES

Yikes! I came back to my 1991 Crown Vic in storage to find a thermostat housing that transformed into powder! It's like dense borax or Tide (without the blue crystals, of course). I'm very worried about how far down this problem goes. The whole intake manifold? All of the block's waterways? Or just the housing? What happened? Was it something to do with aluminum? Eeek!

The car's probably been sitting at least five years. Since it was still in storage, I didn't have any tools with me to dismantle things. But it LOOKED like a heater hose had some rust but not any of this powder.. Should there be a clean intake manifold behind this housing, if it is even possible to get it off?

I did start the car with fuel added to the carb; of course the in-line filter added near the tank that I installed circa 1999 is probably gummed up; added 3 gallons to the tank. Fuel pump never got supplied. Then I noticed this! But point being that the water pump was also run under these powdery conditions. And look -- the thermostat has completely disappeared and FOSSILIZED.

(The spark-plug boot you might notice in the lower-left corner was just a cover for an aux temp gauge I installed.)

The problem with this car -- before all of this -- was that it ran fine but gradually got hotter and hotter until it was really too hot to run. I DID add some stop-leak worried that a head gasket was leaking exhaust into the coolant. But that didn't stop it. New fan clutch. Radiator flows decently; even swapped it with another one. Possibly the heater core can do this?

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3 Replies

MHPAUTOS

MECHANIC
31,937 POSTS

Replace the thermostat and housing, flush the cooling system, replace any hard heater or coolant hoses, back flush the heater and the radiator and add new coolant, see how this helps.

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Sunday, June 9th, 2013 AT 7:50 PM

DB7178

MEMBER
3 POSTS

Mmmmm. I think this problem is due to a reaction with aluminum and whatever was in the coolant -- additives in tap water, for example. Whatever the reaction is, it turns aluminum to a hard powder. And since it looks like the intake manifold is aluminum, the whole thing might be destroyed. Gotta take it off and hope it can be swapped with a good one -- and hope that everything below will be fine.. Flushing at this point isn't possible. The entry into the manifold is caked up.