Wow,you guys are mighty responsive, all this help in under 24 hours. Here is the skinny, talked with her and it turns out it had a blown head gasket when she bought it...last year:doh:. She informs me it is blowing coolant out the exhaust pipe, yikes. Sounds to me like the car is screwed, thoughshe says she can get a rebuilt motor for $200, which sounds pretty questionable to me. She ain't got the dough to buy new, so she may need to get that head gasket taken care of, duh. Why you drive a car that is bleeding to deathis beyond me, it is so much cheaper to fix it now than to wait. Thanks for all the input though, I was looking for questions to drill her with to narrow it down, y'all have been most helpful, I love this site