Chrysler Repair: 1998 Crysler concord over heating, head gasket leak, radiator shop

Question
My 1998 crysler concord has 210k.  It recently began leaking engine coolent at a moderate to high rate and over heating to the piont of not running untill total cool down.  I have been refilling the reivouir to recomended levels at a 50/50 ratio but I cannot keep up.  Even after the car has completle cooled down it runs very rough and will then over heat again within about ten minuites of driving.  The pressure cap for the coolent system is on the resevour and the radiator is vertually inexcessable although most of the leaking and vapour emmisions seem to come from the front left side of the bloc.  The car is a 3.2 leter.  Any ideas would be helpfull in addition to the possible location of both the water pump and thermastat.  Thanks for your help
Colin

Answer
Hi Colin,
Unfortunately I am not familiar with the layout of the 3.2L engine. So I don't know the exact locations of the water pump or thermostat. But from what you describe I would conjecture that the water pump is leaking or that there is a head gasket leak on the left side bank of cylinders. Have you noticed that there is an excessive amount of white smoke from the tail pipe exhaust? That would support the theory of the head gasket leak. Another check for that is to go to a radiator shop and have them put an exhaust gas sensor on the radiator filler cap and look for the precence of exhaust gas in the cooling system. The coolant is either going out the tail pipe, into the engine oil (foam would show up on the dipstick), or leaking from the water pump directly around its shaft and drip on the ground at the front end of the engine. So look at the exhaust, the oil, and the location of the drip (if their is a pulley at that location it might be the water pump pulley shaft where a pump leak would occur, although the water pump pulley is often under a cover because it is driven by the timing belt in many modern engines). The thermostat is usually at the connection between the top radiator hose and the engine, in a housing with a couple of bolts. But your leak is so great that I would move quickly to find out why so that no really major damage is done by overheating the engine block.
Feel free to write back with further observations.

Roland