Why is the 4.6 liter engine in my 1997 Lincoln town car signature series using coolant?

Answer 1

This is a general response to unexpected loss of coolant, not specific to a Town Car:

Assuming you have checked to make sure your upper and lower radiator hoses (the fat hoses) and your heater hoses (the ones about 1 inch in diameter that go to the firewall) are in good shape with tight clamps and no signs of weepage (and you don't find puddles of coolant under your car after you've run it and then park it to cool down)...you may have a blown head gasket (bad) or a cracked engine block (worse): Either can allow coolant loss by internally getting into your engine oil areas. In extreme cases this can cause your oil to appear to be overfilled. In milder cases the heat of the engine when hot will cause much of the water in the oil to evaporate, but it will still leave telltale signs.

How does the oil on your dipstick look? Nice and oily, either almost clear amber if freshly changed or dark almost black if older? That would be normal. If it looks sudsy or scummy, or you find sort of a light brown / yellowish goop inside your oil cap, or bubbles on your dipstick, then you might be getting water into your oil. (Note that the yellowish scum inside an oil cap can also be caused by normal condensation in the engine if you only take short rides in it and don't ever warm it all the way up.)

Either a blown head gasket or a cracked block could give coolant under pressure a way to leak internally and mix with your oil. Neither is cheap to repair, and probably will exceed the value of the car if you take it to a shop for a professional repair.

A year ago I asked a dealer what if anything he'd give me for my always-in-California '95 town car (110K miles, straight body, some sun paint damage) and he offered me a whopping $400! So I kept it. On the other hand I did at one point spend almost $2K to have the transmission rebuilt. Why, when the car has a sales value of under $1K? Because I like the car, it still looks decent, and two thousand dollars is well under a year's worth of new car payments...so since I know the car is basically sound, if nothing else expensive happens to the car for the next year, I'll still have more money in my pocket than had I sold it and been under new car payments.

This is how I decide if repair costs on an older car are worthwhile: I don't measure the cost in dollars, I measure the cost in the number of months of car payments I'll be avoiding by keeping my fully-paid-off car running a while longer. It makes it much easier to justify relatively expensive repairs, even if the trade-in or retail value of my car is next to nil.

When I was a kid cars were pretty much worn out at 100K miles. Now, I expect any but the cheapest vehicles should be good for up to 200K miles if relatively well cared for and not in the areas of country that salt roads in the winter. So spending $2K on a transmission on a car with 110K miles worth less than that? I figure I still should have 90K miles left before it's "worn out" so much that things start breaking faster than I can fix them. I also consider replaceable items like alternators, starters, even water pumps to be just part of the cost of having a vehicle. It helps a lot if you are able to do repairs like that on your own...if you rely on a shop to do these repairs that trade-in to a newer vehicle starts looking more financially prudent a lot sooner.

How has this worked out for me over the years? Had over 200K miles before getting rid of each of these: '61 Chrysler Newport, '68 Datsun Pickup, '75 MBZ 280C, '86 Suzuki Samurai. And now have about 115K on the '95 LTC... On the other hand I had a 95 SAAB turbo convertible that I bought with 100K miles and got rid of with only 135K miles...I wasn't comfortable working in the confined engine compartment, and it seemed every time something went wrong the repair cost at the dealer (just about the only place that would work on it reliably) was $1000. When I realized I could sell it for only $500 less than I paid for it, after 3 years and 35K miles, I sold it before something REALLY expensive went wrong... So, sometimes it just is time to let a treasure go...

Good luck...