The saga of my 12v continues... "Saga" however wrongly implies it's interesting, particularly to this forum's readers probably. Anyways...

Lately my beast has been sputtering and stumbling and on bad days stalling as I try to take off from greenlights just puttering around town. Then refusing to start promptly thereafter. Sometimes flooding, once chewing the battery down to just clicks, etc.

On the way to watch football with Mr.D. and a few others my first CEL appears while on the highway. VAG the car later and it's a Coolant Temp Sensor Impropable Signal. I look this up on these forums later and find out I share the sputtering stalling issue with a lot of other people who replaced that part. So long story short, I replaced it today but not before squirting hot coolant all over my hand digging in my engine bay at night with a flashlight and a screwdriver to pull the old sensor.

Questions....

Why is my coolant tinted dark brown/black when it came out of the port where the CTS was? Is that normal? I haven't done a flush yet but what could make it sorta oily (to the touch) and blackened?

Is successfully changing the sensor with my "palm a basketball sized" hands, by only removing the flex pipe on the intake, an accomplishment I can get a gold star for? Special circumstances: in the dark with a dying flashlight without breaking my breather hoses. Ok well the breather hoses are already broken but who's really counting.

How could you tell the coolant was dark? If you used a flashlight and had the blue/green G-11, it may well have looked dark under that lighting. If your coolant looks fine in the expansion tank, don't worry.

And yes, you deserve cookies for that delicate operation performed with your giant freak hands. ;-)

Just reminded me of Seinfeld.

Well, the way I know the coolant was dark is that after apparently splashing some on my new tennis shoes (burnt orange reto new balances!!) I had to run inside and dig out some emergency shoe cleaner. Upon cleaning of the dark oily mess on my left toe I realized my hands were pretty much covered in watery blackened coolant that when I rubbed it with a paper towel behaved more like oil than coolant (i think).

Anyways, my coolant's been looking a little dirty in the tank and the tank is a nasty shade of brown. So this weekend when I get some time I'll try to finally get around to replacing the tank and flushing the system with a handy garden hose.

Sounds like you have to flsuh the cooling system. get a Prestone flushing kit and flush thoroughly. Also open the drain on the engine block.

Do you have G11 (green) or G12 (pink) in there right now? If you found some vile stuff, maybe someone mixed G11 and G12. Those two coolants are not compatible and may gel.

check your oil to make sure it doesn't look like cappachino (sp?) Otherwise you might be running into a bigger problem than dirty coolant (head gasket going south).

Also, the oil might have been from a leaky gasket, and when you pulled the sensor out, it had oil on it... and then coolant got all over it (and your shoe) and resulted in the mess you had ;)