Two weeks ago this past Friday, my neighbor's wife's Chevrolet Sonic overheated on the way home from Asheville, NC. Saturday morning he asked me if I'd go help him replace a radiator hose that was spewing anti-freeze he had found when he went to get his wife. I said sure. So we headed up the mountain to the parking lot of a small church he had parked it in. We changed the hose, and topped it off with anti-freeze. I told him I would follow him back home. We only got about four miles when it began overheating again so he pulled as far off the road as he could given our location in the mountains. Nothing was leaking. He asked what else we could do to keep from having the vehicle towed. I said the only thing I could think of that I had the tools for, and would be my next best guess would be the thermostat. He said lets do it so we fought through all the obstacles to reach the thermostat and removed it. We drove to the nearest town and bought a replacement. After baking in the sun for a few hours, and grabbing our backsides every time someone drove by us on the side of the road since we were so close to the shoulder, we got the thermostat replaced. We buttoned everything back up and made it back home. The car seemed to run fine, no overheating, and we assumed everything was OK.
Sunday morning he called me and said the car wouldn't start. He told me his wife had just replaced the battery a few days earlier. I drove down to his house, tried to jump start the car to see if maybe she got had gotten a bad battery. The battery seemed to be good. The starter was engaged but the car wouldn't start. Then in subsequent tries, the starter quit engaging completely. Bad starter?
That lasted for a few minutes until the starter started to engage again. I'm no mechanic, just someone with some basic knowledge. I assumed he had spark since the engine was trying to turn over. I checked for fuel and pressure from the bleeder valve on the fuel rail and there was fuel and it shot out strong so I assumed things were good there. Air filter was clean. I told him that, unless the starter was indeed bad, that was about all I could think of.
On Monday he had the car towed a few miles to an old school mechanic. After looking at the car, he told my neighbor he thought the car had a bad head gasket due to the overheating from the week before. ****And this is where I was really hoping someone here on BITOG could help with.**** He said he didn't want to replace the head gasket until he found out if anything had to be done to the car's ECU after the head gasket got replaced (He told my neighbor he didn't have the equipment necessary to do that). He told my neighbor that the car's ECU should have been re-programmed after the battery was replaced and that could have been a contributing factor to the overheating.
Does this make sense to anybody? Or am I just too darn old and not up with current battery replacement technology. What might be a reason for a car's ECU to be re-programmed after replacing the battery, or head gasket? Sorry for the long-winded narrative but I felt the whole story would help. If you have questions, please ask since I may have forgotten something in the narrative.
Sunday morning he called me and said the car wouldn't start. He told me his wife had just replaced the battery a few days earlier. I drove down to his house, tried to jump start the car to see if maybe she got had gotten a bad battery. The battery seemed to be good. The starter was engaged but the car wouldn't start. Then in subsequent tries, the starter quit engaging completely. Bad starter?
On Monday he had the car towed a few miles to an old school mechanic. After looking at the car, he told my neighbor he thought the car had a bad head gasket due to the overheating from the week before. ****And this is where I was really hoping someone here on BITOG could help with.**** He said he didn't want to replace the head gasket until he found out if anything had to be done to the car's ECU after the head gasket got replaced (He told my neighbor he didn't have the equipment necessary to do that). He told my neighbor that the car's ECU should have been re-programmed after the battery was replaced and that could have been a contributing factor to the overheating.
Does this make sense to anybody? Or am I just too darn old and not up with current battery replacement technology. What might be a reason for a car's ECU to be re-programmed after replacing the battery, or head gasket? Sorry for the long-winded narrative but I felt the whole story would help. If you have questions, please ask since I may have forgotten something in the narrative.