Thread: Disappearing coolant and oil ?

I sold my 200sx se Ga16de to a friend a while ago.

A couple months ago she called me and said when she recently checked the oil...there was none in it
She claimed that it wasn't long before that she had to put a quart in.
The car does not leak any oil or smoke,according to her.I checked the coolant and oil for cross-contamination from a blown headgasket,everything looked good.
I told her to keep an eye on the oil and temps....Had not heard back until today.
This time she left a message that there was no oil or coolant in the car.
As of now,I do not know if the car was overheated or not,because it was a voicemail she left.
I left a voicemail for her ,andI am waiting to hear back again .
In the meantime,I figured I would get some input from here...tell me what you think.

GO

Is she checking the reservoir or the radiator?

is she parking at an angle when checks the oil?

might check the drain plug for the coolant. i had an issue with mine. it would leak under pressure
also, could be burning oil just to the point where it doesn't smoke if it takes a couple months to burn off the oil. maybe it does smoke a little when she starts from a stop but thats it and doesn't notice yet. could check the intake hose for oil and look through the throttle body. there can be a slight coating on older motors but not puddles

I talked to her a couple minutes ago and it was the reservoir that was empty.She added 50/50 to it .
She says it has not overheated.

She claims the oil was filled before making a 5 hour trip and then it was not showing on the dipstick at all.
I advised her to check the oil at each fillup for the next couple tanks of gas and report back to me.
What stinks is the car runs like a top,and has been running great.
She is going off to college in January,but moving up there (a few hours away) on wednesday so the timing is crappy to have issues.

In my opinion, your not getting all the correct information you need in order to determine the problem. It's not unusual for some of the coolant to evaporate and have to add over time. Sounds to me like the dipstick was read incorrectly. I usually don't check my oil immediately after driving it because it is obviously necessary to allow all the oil to settle back into the pan in order to get an accurate reading. If there is no leak, no burning coolant smell, no smoke, no "milky" oil and all is operating properly it sounds like driver error but that's just my 2 cents.

Headgasket on the way out....

^ yep sadly the truth

It's a GA16DE though, which makes stock I think 90WHP, lol. Is a blown headgasket common in a car like that with such low power output? I have no idea. I know it's "relatively" rare to happen in the SR20DE but more likely in the VE. (happened to me)

why do you think its more common in a ve when the normal ve headgasket is the same...

Well, for me, because I've had 7 SR20DE powered cars and never a single problem with the head gasket, and the only SR20VE I ever had, blew after a year.

lol.