Thread: Overheated - Is the Motor Toast?

I was driving my 240 and had a coolant leak. Strangely, I didn't smell any coolant burning or leaking and I didn't know I had a problem until I saw my gauge. The motor started to perform a little sluggish and I looked down at my temperature gauge and it was a little bit under the H and climbing. I immediately turned the car off and pulled over. Once I spotted the leak and decided it couldn't be fixed on the road side, I had the car towed home. I filled the radiator back up with water and the car fired right up. Everything sounds good with no smoke.

My question is how much damage do you think the motor sustained? I don't think it was overheating for long due to the speed the needle was climbing. I'm just worried that I might have toasted the motor or done some irreversible wear and tear on the engine. I plan to fix the leak, put new fluids in the car, and do a compression test to make sure.

i think i overheated my first ka like 5 times before the head gasket finally went. if theres no coolant in the oil and vice versa, youre probably ok.

You're probably fine.

Lol, this happened to me about 4 times in a period of 2 hours of driving on the 4th of July in my VE and I'm all good. As long as you didn't run it til it shut down itself you're fine. I'd say do an oil change and get some redline water wetter for the coolant just in case. Also where was it leaking from?

On my bros 240 with a KA it leaked out all the oil and I drove it like that and redlined the bitch through 3 gears then it overheated.. Stopped, put oil and it to this date it has 190psi across the board lol aka you should be fine... Although on my sr my friend did this and it lowered compression to 130 on 2 cylinders..

I had a temperature probe fitting for my electric fans installed in the upper radiator hose. The fitting broke and sprayed coolant out the 1/8" NPT hole. It was angled in a way that the coolant sprayed right to the ground, hence no burning coolant smell. On the bright side, the engine bay looks pretty clean. I'm pretty upset about the whole ordeal.

Just did a compression test. I'm reading 160psi across all four cylinders. All the spark plugs look good as well. I ran out of time, but I plan to change the fluids next. I noticed that when I cranked the car on, the idle never dropped below 1500rpms while warming up, like the IACV was stuck or something. I guess it's something I'll have to look into after I fix everything. Stupid car.