my car had slowed down when I pushed the gas pedal. I had to get towed. White powder was on the face of engine. Car will not crank. It makes a humming sound
Any ideas
If the engine will not crank…where is the humming sound coming from?
Obviously it can’t be the engine…
A coolant leak will leave a white powdery residue when it evaporates. If it ran low on coolant and overheated, the engine could be seized. The hum would be coming from a starter that cannot turn a seized engine.
However, a dying battery will off-gas and corrode the battery terminals and may cause aluminum parts to corrode, which also looks like a white powder. I’ve seen it a lot on salt-damaged cars. A very weak battery could also make the starter hum.
The starter could be turning over (“humming”) but not engaging.
Or it could be locked up and humming as it tries to turn the engine over. Either way, a mechanic should be able to diagnose this in about 1 minute.
Offhand, sounds like a coolant leak which led to severe overheating and an engine seizure. This should not take but a few minutes to come up with a diagnosis. Hopefully I’m dead wrong.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too… the humming is the sound of a poor overtaxed starter motor trying to turn… and start the seized engine.
I suspect this one is going to get deep. And really expensive.
I would respectfully request of the OP that he/she post back with the full details once the shop has had a chance to look at the car on exactly what’s wrong. And with his/her maintenance habits. We might be able to make some suggestions to keep this from happening again in the future.
Were all fluids (especially the oil and coolant) at the proper levels the last time you checked them? How many miles ago did you check them?
When the top plastic tank of the radiator in my Corolla sprang a leak a while back and sprayed coolant in the engine compartment, I seem to recall noticing a white chalky material coating stuff in the area after everything dried off. It was pretty subtle though, not much of it. But it was on what you’d call the “face of the engine”, as that’s immediately adjacent to the radiator. It was most noticeable on the exhaust manifold.
As mentioned above, OP should check all the fluid levels, especially the coolant. You’ll have to look inside the radiator, not just the overflow bottle. Hopefully you have a radiator cap so the job will be easy. The coolant level should be close to the top of the radiator if there’s no coolant leak.