03 element 288000 miles.
over heated and dumped all water/antifreeze on ground.
It was late so it sat till morning.
refilled the water/antifreeze..
When i attempted to start it...it would not start.
any ideas on how to diagnos the problem?

 

Do a compression test, probably have a blown head gasket.

 

Does it crank and not start, or does it not even crank?

 

Crank but no start.
I have since tried to do a compression test but when trying to take the Coil packs out I broke 2 of them. So obviously I have another problem.
I am guessing when it got hot those plastic coil packs melted .
So what is the best way to get those coil packs out Before going any further?

 

Get a nice long pair of needle-nose pliers and see if you can get a good grip on the boot, then yank. If you have the kind of needle-nose pliers where the ends are kind-of bent in a circle (for pulling hoses off hose barbs), they may work even better.

Side-question...is there any sign of oil in the sparkplug wells? Oil will destroy the rubber that the boots are made of if it's submerged for any length of time. Once the rubber is compromised, it's entirely possible the spark that's supposed to travel to the spark plug will instead travel through the boot into the metal that forms the spark plug tube. This could cause a crank-no-start if the spark isn't making it to the spark plug.

 

If the engine was hot enough to melt the coils packs, your whole car would have burned up…those are designed to withstand high heat, so something else must be playing into them breaking.
The “boots” are silicon, not rubber.