2001 Chevy Impala Question?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Luan M
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Luan M

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Hello. I posted a question before about my car and now I would like to follow up. Going up a hill, the car had begun to lose power and the engine light started flashing and when I pulled over just in time at the top of the hill, the car shutoff. I noticed the temperature gauge had not reached red yet but it was a little well over the half temperature mark. I walked out of the car and the engine was red hot, literally red towards the bottom and the car was steaming out of the left side under the hood. My mechanic told me that he checked and there is hardly any oil in there as well as coolant and that he would need to check if the head gasket was blown or if the cylinder heads had cracked and would cost me a lot of money just to check them. Can anyone elaborate on this or give me their opinion on what is wrong as it would be much appreciated. Is his conclusion correct or is there something else wrong and should I begin looking for another vehicle? Thank you in advance.
The thing is though is that I checked the dipstick on a few occasions recently prior to this incident and the level was at the full mark.
 
If you ran the engine that low on oil that it was so hot as to be glowing then the heads and gaskets are only part of the problem, your entire engine is probably junk, you may be able to salvage the block and have it machined, the crank, connecting rods, pistons are probably junk, heads may be able to be rebuilt if not cracked, and other small parts may be salvageable. I'm surprised that the engine light didn't come on sooner when your oil was this low.
 
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