My mother has a 1999 Daewoo Nubira. About a week ago or two, the radiator was acting up. It would run out of water and over heat. My father replaced it with a new one. It still continued to over heat and run out of water.
On 4/29/10. It began to shake, sputter, and it acted like it wanted to turn off on it’s own. To day 4/30/10 when I checked the water it had none and the oil was a diffrent color, it is a brown and it’s filled past the MAX line. Can any one tell me what is wrong
Classic, textbook symptoms of a blown head gasket…In rare cases, the head may be cracked, the symptoms are the same… With coolant in the oil, the serviceability of the engine is questionable…
Yes, unfortunately, this does sound like a head gasket problem.
If this problem is caught and corrected promptly, it is possible to attenuate engine damage. However, the continued overheating of the engine does not bode well for it. Overheating by itself can spell the end of an engine. When combined with dilution of the motor oil with coolant, the engine probably has come to the end of its practical life.
Due to the low book value of the car, you should begin evaluating whether you want to spend the money necessary to fix it.
The misdiagnosis and continued operation of the engine while it’s severely overheating has, with 99% probability, turned the engine into scrap metal.
From an economic standpoint a '99 Nubira is not worth a proper engine rebuild.
A compression test could be used to verify the top end damage and a pan drop along with dropping a few bearing caps could verify (some) of the lower end damage.
Odds are if the overheating happened quickly it was caused by a stuck thermostat, not the radiator.