Overheating....need help figuring out what's wrong
 

Hey guys,

The other day my coolant temp spiked all of a sudden when driving and the car started bucking. Car threw a code for overheating obv... So I initially thought great....head gasket. When driving back to my house i put the heater on high and it would go from hot air and cooling the motor to shooting out only cold air and the engine getting over temp again. I changed my oil and found no coolant in it and vice versa. I changed my thermostat instead to no change. I'm guessing now it's my water pump. Anyone else have any ideas?

Same thing happened to my Firebird. Might have to replace the radiator, could be a bunch of crap in it. You can obviously test this by unhooking all the hoses and running water through it, might even clean the crap out of it.

That's a good idea. The radiator is only about 8k miles old. The dealer replaced it when I bought the car. I'll still try that though. There could have been all kinds of crap in the system.

You should probably find out why they replaced it if you don't already know. Could be a re-occurring issue with the car. If so, you could be entitled to repairs if you have a Lemon Law in your state.

Oh the old one was cracked.

Did you get the air out of the coolant system? Did you use an OEM thermostat? The autozone or kragen ones have failed fairly quickly from some of the other posts I've read.

I used a OEM one. I'm gonna bleed the system some more and see if that helps

recent mechanical work by a dealer pressing to sell almost undoubtedly equals air in your system not well bled.

Agreeing with the post above that there could be air in your system. When you said that your heater was blowing out hot air and then it goes cold that is a tail tail sign of air in the system usually. I have burped coolant systems 4 and 5 times before I got all of the air out of it. They can be a real PITA for sure! Try that and I believe that is all it should be. My best wishes to you and hope that takes care of the issue :)

Thanks,
Dallin

I am having a similar problem. There was air in my system and my car started to over heat. I parked the car. Tested the pressure and it turned out the stock radiator had a nice crack in the plastic...

Purchased a new GodSpeed Aluminum radiator. Install was a PITA. After all was buttoned up. I began to pour Antifreeze and bleed thru bleeder screw. This really is fkn time consuming and for nothing. I still had air in system. Purchased a Spill free funnel, and after letting the car heat up and revving motor etc... this is what happened.

http://youtu.be/93yfeY2aJIQ

When it started to boil up like this I plugged it and heat started blowing out of my vents. Great Scott I think I finally got it or so I thought. Drove about 40 miles no problem hot air and all...

Parked at the hospital because I was going to visit someone and the needle started rising. Turned off car, and let it sit. Drove home no problems turned on car this morning no problem. However I am still getting cold air when stopped, and I'm nervous I have a bigger problem here.

Anyone have any thoughts? Do I need more antifreeze and bleed the system more and more... I dunno. I'm ready to loose it.

Sounds like air bubbles.

Try filling up the rad (do it really carefully) while the engine is dead cold. You will also know you got air in your system because when you open the rad cap, you hear something like a hiss or faint pop, sometimes the sound of water gushing down somewhere.

I had the patience to repeat the same BS every morning before going to work until it won't take any more coolant. So far the temp is stable. Seems like i've removed most of the bubbles.

Thanks Man, this really is some ******** to deal with though.... Going to try bleeding it again filling it and bleeding it. LOL I've spent more money on antifreeze then the damn radiator LOL

I've read here that people had to jack the front end of car up pretty high to help speed up the bleeding along with leaving the heater on.

+^ yes I've read posts about that too.

Tell me about it man.

I think you also need to keep the fan on the hottest setting while you're bleeding the rad.

Do a quick search i've seen some threads about people on here dealing with air bubble issue.

I filled the radiator this morning cold, with the spill free and it sucked more antifreeze up as bubbles were coming out. Guess I'll have to do this maybe 1 more time. The heat is working and so far so good with the over heating. Will keep you posted.

Friend had told me possible warped head I started freaking out. This motor was replaced 20K miles ago.

Good to hear :thumbup:

Keep doing it until it won't fill up anymore.

Craziness, but true. Where does it all go haaha

I'm going through the same bs right now. Had a crate motor installed 2 years ago and the car sat. Had it serviced at SRD (awesome shop in tempe) to change a the fluids and take a look at everything before bringing it to it's new home in san diego. Here I am 1,600 miles later and i get a check engine light that spits out two of the same code (p0128) engine temp below thermostat regulation. Based on pepboys advice I bought a new thermostat and swapped it out. Come to find out this crate motor didn't even have a thermostat in it. Swapped that, overheated. Swapped the coolant temperature sensor, overheated. Bought a spill free funnel and ran it for an hour... Thought it was fixed. 40 miles later... Overheated. Jesus! So here I am praying to god it's not the headgasket and I'm going to try bleeding this thing daily like you guys are saying. I'll pray to the car gods for you if you pray for me. :)

Keep us posted. I would try the spill free in the morning watch how it starts to suck it in and bubbles come out. I also squeeze the top radiator and bottom radiator hose that created more bubbles and more antifreeze was sucked in.

Topped off and "burped" the system again this morning. Barely any air bubbles and I had the heater on (which seems to blow luke warm while sitting). Did that for about 30 minutes and drove it 4 miles to work. So far so good. I'll keep you posted.