Pontiac - Montana :: 2001 - Overheating / Low On Coolant
May 4, 2013
I have a 2001 Pontiac Montana that was overheating. It was low on coolant, and using coolant. I took it to a mechanic who checked it out and found exhaust gases in the coolant. He initially told me that it was a bad head gasket. After doing a bit of research, I am told that it could also be an intake manifold gasket. I know I am losing coolant, but I cannot tell where. I don't think it is going into the oil, as my oil level does not go up. I do not see coolant leaking below the vehicle, so perhaps it is going into the exhaust? Or leaking slowly on top of the engine where it is burned off before it can go on the ground.
Is there any test I can do to determine which gasket is bad before tearing into the vehicle? I thought about sending an oil sample off to determine if I am getting any coolant in the oil, but I don't know if that would be useful information at this point.
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I flushed out my cooling system through the radiator with distilled water four times. It's a 3 gallon system, but I could only drain/fill a bit more than a gallon each time.
I figured that by the end of it, it's mostly distilled water so I only added antifreeze concentrate at the end. How long should I let the system circulate before I considered it well mixed and ready to test the concentration?
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I have a 2001 Pontiac Montana van, when i drive i feel like there is just not enough power there. Most of the time when i hit 30mph the engine drops in power, hard to explain so I will try my best. I get in turn the key starts right up with out any hesitation what's so ever! I leave for work, while driving when I come to a stop sign and stop and take off its gets sluggish so while my speedometer is going up my movement is not changing as it should so needless to say I have to do 80 85 mph just to keep up with the average moving can at 70mph.
Once in a while I will give it some gas and let go of it and it would back fire a little not sure why. Recently I had new head gaskets put on cause temperature was not staying where it was suppose to be, they smooth out the headers and did a tune up, not sure about the timing, New fluids, once in awhile the temp would climb but that cause of the fans. Took it to AutoZone they did a obd code check came back with O2 senser and nothing else, so if I replace this will it bring my van back to normal running operation? And would it be anything I could check to rule out?
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I have a 2001 Montana with 140,000 miles on it. I bought it used five years ago. The transmission is going out. The shop did a scan and found the torque converter clutch is sticking on. What this is? Should I make the repairs or ditch the van?
Good points: four new tires in December 2013; body is great; and minor maintenance repairs.
Bad points: the air conditioning is broken and the heat is forever terrible.
The van is currently at my regular shop and they do not do transmissions so I do not have an estimate or more information about the problem.
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There is a strange rubbing sort of noise coming from the front end. I hear it when I take my foot off the accelerator and/or when I turn the steering wheel to the left. To me it sounds like it's coming from the passenger side of the front end, but I could be wrong. The most recent work done to the vehicle was the brakes, about a month or two ago.
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Vibrates above 45 mph. Did have tires balanced . Still happens.
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My 2000 Pontiac Montana squeaks while accelerating. There is about 55,000 miles on it. At first I thought it was a belt but it would squeak the whole time if so. It only squeaks (like a mouse), every time accelerating.
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I have a 2006 Pontiac Montana, The little engine picture came up on my dash. I took it to the car parts store to have the code read and it came up as an O2 pre-heater sensor. My husband has been trying to google how to fix it and can't come up with anything. It doesn't even come up as to where the part is located.
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I have a 1999 Pontiac Montana that has recently started whining when I accelerate. It stops after I take my foot off the gas pedal. It usually takes about 15 minutes of driving before the whining starts. It started about 4 months ago and has recently become louder.
Van has 85K miles.
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The passenger air bag indicator light got pushed in so I need to get the vent panel off so I can push the light back flush. I do know the surrounding of the radio pops off without any tools. But taking that off doesn't get me anywhere. I still don't see access to remove the vents.
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My van will rev really high when started and may stay that way for most of the day. Sometimes once it is turned off it will restart just fine. but when it is revving like this you have to hold the break down at stop lights, constantly slow down because it wants to take off. Now it is stalling when driving slowly. the throttle positioning censor has been replace a couple of times.
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I have a 2006 Pontiac Montana SV6 with 80,000 miles on it. Recently the dashboard warning "check gas cap" has started coming on. I have replaced the gas cap and cleared the code and it is doing it again. It seems like it is more likely to do it when the gas tank is 1/2 or less full but it also did it today with almost a full tank. The code from the computer said P0455, what this could be?
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I have a 2004 Pontiac Montana minivan. I get a hard downshift from 2nd to 1st only when the engine is cold - especially noticeable in cold weather. After a mile or so of driving (or a few minutes of idling) is shifts fine. All upshifts are fine all the time. The tranny fluid level is fine and is in good condition. What it could be?
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I have a 2002 pontiac montana that needs the head gasket replace. Mileage is 152,000 miles with a v6 engine. I would like to get at least another 75,000 miles once the repair is done. Is it worth doing as alternative is to scrap the van and buy a new vehicle...
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What is causing the engine to sound like it's not getting enough gas AFTER we turn off the A/C? The two times we have used the A/C, after we push the button to turn it off, the engine sputters like it is going to die ... sounds like it is not getting enough gas. It has over 178,000 miles on it and it sat for about three years before it was given to us.
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So i have a 01 LS and i love it so much. Ive only had it for 5months and since the 3rd month ive been having some overheating problems. Ive replaced the coolant reservoir it drove fine for about 3weeks then started to run hot again and leak coolant out the reservoir cap so i replaced that. Still ran hot.. so my brother got some air pockets out of the system but, it still ran hot. So i replaced the t-stat. After replacing that it did fine for a few days then started to run hot again. This time it seem to run hot one day and not the next until one day it ran hot constantly and steam would come from the reservoir and coolant would leak from under the car (behind front drivers side wheel.).
So when it leak i would check the overflow tank sometimes it will be full and sometimes not. When it wasn't full I would refill it until i ran ran out of antifreeze. Well i parked it after it leaked out the last of antifreeze that was in tank. So a few days later i got some antifreeze that was given to me by my brother which was red/orange all purpose antifreeze. I filled the tank up as it was dry and had leaked out all the green antifreeze. I started the car and let it run. It ran for about 20min without getting hot quickly like it usually do, air worked great but hea not so great.
Then I started seeing steam come from reservoir tank which was full of red coolant then its started leaking GREEN coolant instead of the red i filled the tank up with. Also the temp gauge never went to H while it did all of this. And the antifreeze drip from like 4 or 5 different places behind my left front wheel. Its a v8 3.9 engine.
I know one day i checked my coolant after it ran hot one day and it was low so i filled it up with water and forgot to put cap back on and i hopped on freeway. Soon as i got off it started smoking really bad i pull over and the coolant was boiling which i also forgot to mention. Thats another thing it has been doing. But the smoke came from the coolant boiling in tank and since i forgot to put cap on the smoke came out freely from tank. Could this have caused a problem. Although my car was running hot with coolant boiling in reservoir way before i did that and even after.
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I have had my 2001 Alero since it was brand new off the lot. It has been a strong running car. It has had done work on it, most recently the mechanic I'm using has replaced the intake gasket, thermostat, hoses, and coolant reservoir because of the coolant leaking. After all that still having problems with the coolant leaking (but apparently not mixing in to the oil)....I've just been putting water in and I have to stop after driving about 10 minutes to refill the reservoir.
The mechanic was going to replace the cooling fans because he said they weren't working but then he hooked up a sensor machine and there were no issues, so he ended up replacing the radiator because he thought there might be a blockage causing the water to boil back up into the reservoir, and the car overheating. The car drives great, but after about 10 minutes there is a type of sputtering. The mechanic is saying that he has replaced everything that can be replaced in the cooling system and that he thinks the head gaskets are bad.
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I have a 2001 Nissan Pathfinder SE with 160,000 miles. I took my car in for an overheating problem yesterday after I noticed the coolant was leaking out of my car. I needed a simple hose repair to fix the leak problem, but now they want to replace the temperature gauge because they say that it is still running hot due to: "temperature gauge is stuck and not letting the cold water in." He said that he fixed the hose and it is blowing the cool air to the motor, so the only problem could be the temperature gauge.
Within the past year, I replaced the radiator and hoses. He is saying the temperature gauge + labor would amount to around $300. The car is probably worth around $2250 for a dealer trade-in. I am planning on trading-in the Pathfinder towards the purchase of new one once I am able to present it to the dealer in workable condition. What to do?
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I own a 2002 Pontiac Montana van with 36,000 original miles. The past year it started making a loud whining noise that seems to come from the rear of the vehicle. It seems to be worse in summer than in winter. It iis really loud when turning into a parking lot or when turning sharply to go thru a drive thru at a restaurant. I have taken it to several mechanics and also to a dealership, and no one seems to be able to find the problem.
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While driving my recently purchased minivan (a 1999 Pontiac Montana) for about 40 miles, I noticed the temperature gauge was reading high when I wasn't moving very fast, though short of what appears to be the overheating zone. Opening up the radiator revealed no coolant that I could see, but plenty of brown sludge. Looking under the oil cap revealed more brown pudding-type stuff (that wasn't there when I did an oil change when I first got it).
The lack of coolant makes me nervous that the engine might have overheating without the temperature gauge reading it properly. Is that possible? The heater was working, which searches seem to suggest means there must have been some in there.
I figure that either the intake or head gasket must be bad, so I'm nervously setting out to replace both using a gasket set like this: [URL] .....
What I'm more worried about though, is clearing the cooling system out of all the gunk. It sounds like oxalic acid and washing soda and back flushing might work? But I'm anticipating a large quantity of sludge, oily, rusty coolant water. How am I going to dispose of it all?
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I have a Pontiac Montana minivan SV6 that is making strange clunking noises from possibly the rear or middle of the van when I go over a bump, large or small. I have had it in to our local mechanic and the local tire/repair shop and transmission shop. They have not been able to locate a problem other than agreeing that there is a noise.
Our mechanic replaced the front struts and strut mounts, the rear shocks and has gone over the entire suspension and transmission more than once. The noise is very loud, like something is broken but despite three separate shops checking it out nothing can be found.
Any possibility is could be something with the automatic side doors, such as the motor being loose or something strange like that? If it didn't have this clunking sound the ride would be very smooth and quiet. It doesn't affect the ride at all. The other bit of info here is that we haven't owned this van for very long, we bought it as is thinking that it needed shocks or struts. They've been replaced but the sound is still around!
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