News:

Due to a technical issue, some recently uploaded pictures have been lost. We are investigating why this happened but the issue has been resolved so that future uploads should be safe.  You can also Modify your post (MORE...) and re-upload the pictures in your post.

Main Menu

Weird happening with a 4.9

Started by Barry M Wheeler #2189, May 21, 2020, 08:52:38 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Barry M Wheeler #2189

We tried "pickup" shopping the first of the week at our "local" Walmart which is 25 miles away. Everything went well except the large print sign I had made instructing the loader crew how to close the trunk was read, and promptly ignored. Luckily, the pull-down survived without damage. However, I had no more that pulled out on the main drag to home when we got an increasingly loud whirring noise.

It was raining, so I kept on going with some noise still coming from the engine compartment. (I know, you are "supposed" to pull over and see what's wrong.) But with my wife's memory loss and a trunk full of groceries, the car was still running, and I was in no mood to do that. The noise got worse, then reached a crescendo and then stopped. We got a couple of engine warning lights and I felt the loss of power steering. But the car kept chugging along.

We got on the secondary road that I used when I still was working in town and limped along about 45 mph. Instead of heading for the highway, I kept on county roads, getting closer and closer to home. When I finally got to our home road we had only six miles left to go, with several friends farms along the way. Finally, we got to Flora, and lamps all over the place,

I pulled onto our street and finally eased to a stop facing the wrong way in front of the house. I turned it off and then it started boiling over. After we unloaded, I called my mechanic to come pick up the car. I thought the new AC compressor I had them install last week might have failed and seized up.

Then yesterday morning, the receptionist called and said that the car was done. The belt was all it needed. BUT, what had caused it to fail was that a bolt had loosened in the water pump and gotten in the way, causing the reasonably new belt to break. This occurance is why I'm setting myself up for pointing fingers and what all. I don't know whether or not one should check things like this now and then on these engines or not.

In any case, we made a twenty mile round trip yesterday to pick up medicine and the car worked fine. I evidently did no damage to the car as it was quiet as a mouse and operated well.

This is the second time in 62 years of Cadillac ownership I have driven some distance with a hot engine. WAY back in ought '58, in my very first 1941 Cadillac, I was headed for Chicago looking for parts on US 41 north of Kentland. The needle pegged and the first station I came to "couldn't help me." I had seen a small blue Cadillac sign on a fence just before it happened and decided to try going back to them in Kentland.

That trip was fourteen miles and again, I limped along, the Cadillac still going. I found the dealership and the head mechanic came out and pointed out the belt slipping around the pulley on the water pump. My brother, who had changed the oil recently at the station where he worked, had not seen the grease fitting on the water pump and it seized up. He lubed it and  I resumed my trip.

God does look after fools and drunks it is said, but I think it might help if you're driving a Cadillac.
Barry M. Wheeler #2189


1981 Cadillac Seville
1991 Cadillac Seville

Eric DeVirgilis CLC# 8621

Noise described + loss of power steering immediately suggested a frozen accessory pulley before I read all the way through. Chalk it up to the many "joys" of car ownership, regardless of age.

Glad it all worked out and always guard your open trunk like a hawk whenever the uninformed are present. ;)
A Cadillac Motorcar is a Possession for which there is no Acceptable Substitute

gkhashem

1959 Oldsmobile 98 Holiday Sports Sedan
1960 Cadillac Coupe Deville (CLC Sr #72)
1964 Oldsmobile 98 Town Sedan (OCA 1st)
1970 GMC C1500
1977 Oldsmobile 98 Regency Coupe
1978 Cadillac Coupe Deville (CLC Sr Crown #959)*
1992 Oldsmobile 98 (OCA 1st)
1996 Oldsmobile 98
*CLC Past President's Preservation

Past Cadillacs
1959 Coupe Deville
1966 Coupe Deville (Sr #861)*
1991 Eldorado Biarritz (Sr #838)

TJ Hopland

Hard to tell exactly how much time passed at various stages of the story but it seems pretty clear that when the power steering quit was when the belt must have completely let go.   These like many mid 80's and newer cars just have a single belt so loss of that means you lost everything.  The most short term critical item would be the water pump.   I would be watching the coolant level very closely like at least daily checks over the next couple weeks or months.   I would also be checking the engine oil level to make sure that isn't changing or starting to look funny.

I'm not going to go pull the manual or go look at my car to see how many water pump bolts this has but I would say 20 would not be too far off.   Its a really odd design especially since this engine family was supposedly designed to be transverse from the start.   Basically whats going on is the cooling ports are where they are on any classic V engine which is just below the heads.   Normally in the longitudinal days you more or less did it small block Chev style where you just make the water pump have passages on it that bolt right over those holes and have the pump standing out over the timing chain in the middle. 

The 4100 when it was supposedly modified for longitudinal mostly RWD service and rushed into production early for the 82 model year got a fairly traditional water pump setup that stood off the front of the engine several inches even without the fan bolted to it.   When they finally got back to what was supposedly the original concept of the smaller transverse car in mid 85 those ports stayed the same but they needed to save a lot of space so the actual pump got hung off the side of the block like where the power steering pump was in the 60's-80's but then there is a cover that extends over the whole front of the engine to connect to the traditional passage locations.  This is where the million bolts and a rather long gasket come in.
   
On a classic longitudinal (usually RWD) setup with a belt driven fan under some lucky conditions you may get some water pump operation from the ram air spinning the fan that is attached to the water pump and now able to spin freely due to the missing belt but the chances of engine load vs air speed don't often align perfectly.  Usually load and therefore heat that needs to be removed are greater than the slowly turning pump can handle even at below freezing ambient temps.  And most of the time you had a fairly low tech and overbuilt all cast iron engine that could take some high temps without significant damage.  Here we got an engine that is a combination of cast iron and aluminum with wet liners that is turned sideways with belt driven water pump and electric fans so no belt no coolant circulation at all. 


https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/cadillac,1995,deville,4.9l+v8,1025783,cooling+system,water+pump,2208

More ramblings about these engines in case you are interested and have time......

This engine is only a slightly refined version of everyone's favorite the HT4100.   You have the odd combination of an aluminum block and iron heads.  Aluminum doesn't generally do well with heat abuse and the combination this has of aluminum and cast iron mixed tends to be even more fragile because of the different rates the materials heat and cool. 

The 3rd twist is that with the aluminum block you have steel cylinder sleeves or liners that in this case are what is called a 'wet' sleeve meaning that there is coolant directly around the sleeves.   Think of it as the aluminum block having say a square hole with the round sleeve in it that forms the cylinder and the coolant being in that square space.  A dry sleeve engine has the round bores in the aluminum which form the coolant passages and the steel sleeve simply slides into the round bore.  With the dry sleeve you don't have to deal with trying to seal the coolant you just have to worry about compression.  Dry sleeves don't cool as well because you have that extra layer of aluminum that ends up insulating the sleeve. 

Pretty much any engine that isn't cast iron has sleeves.  Some sleeves are replaceable and others are basically placed in the molds and the block is cast around them.  I believe most modern car engines are non replaceable and that is been the norm for small engines like found on lawn and garden equipment for a long time.   Replaceable sleeves are and always have been really common for industrial engines for ease of service.  A mechanic can go out to a piece of equipment literally in a field with a set of pre machined and fitted liners and pistons and essentially rebuild the engine using mostly hand tools.  Thats a big advantage if you have a really large machine that needs to be making you money 8-16 hours per day and would take weeks to disassemble to be transported on multiple trucks to be repaired.   
StPaul/Mpls, MN USA

73 Eldo convert w/FiTech EFI
80 Eldo Diesel
90 CDV
And other assorted stuff I keep buying for some reason

Barry M Wheeler #2189

Thanks for the treatise, TJ. I expected you to chime in, and you were the one that I expected to point a gentle finger or two.

The "stop engine now" light did not come on, only the red light for the coolant loss. I will keep a close eye on things for a while, and thanks for suggesting what to look for. I was expecting things to go south all the time, but I got around corners quite easily, and I was listening for any loud noises from the engine.

Hopefully, we got away from the incident without major damage.
Barry M. Wheeler #2189


1981 Cadillac Seville
1991 Cadillac Seville

TJ Hopland

That is an interesting detail that the stop now didn't come on.   I wasn't really thinking of that specifically but maybe that is a good sign that it didn't come on and it means things really didn't get that hot somehow and why it appears all is well.  My engineering wanna be brain really can't understand how that would be possible with no circulation but its really sounding like it did it.  Its also giving me hope that maybe its worth trying to save my 90 and look close at putting a 4.9 instead of the sick 4.5 I have now.

Maybe they really did make some huge changes in the 4.9 and its really an underappreciated engine?  Its starting to sound that way.   You for sure never would have heard a story like that with the 4100.   Any time I heard 'I was able to make it home' with those the next line wasn't good news unless it was still under warranty.   
StPaul/Mpls, MN USA

73 Eldo convert w/FiTech EFI
80 Eldo Diesel
90 CDV
And other assorted stuff I keep buying for some reason