Over-heating issue, Chrysler LHS, 1997, 3.5 V6.
The car overheated on my wife the other evening. She got it back home, and I found a pin-hole leak in a heater core line (aluminum pipe), and I repaired it. I just sanded off the paint, down to bare aluminum, used some plastic-steel stuff and made a patch, let that set, then wrapped the patched area with some rubber heater hose and used a hose clamp around that.
For good measure (or some would say bad measure) I put in a can of Barr's Leak.
I refilled the coolant tank and started the car and let the engine warm up, and noted no leaks anywhere.
After the car idled in the driveway about twenty to thirty minutes with no problems, I drove it down the street about a mile and that's when the gauge went all the way to H and the tank started boiling over... I had a 50/50 anti-freeze mix in there.
I got to a gas station and got a water hose and hosed the radiator down until the gauge moved back down about 1/2 way. The tank was too hot to remove the cap to add any more water. I drove back home, and by the time I got home, the gauge was nearly pegged at the H once again.
I thought that the thermostat might be stuck. So after the engine cooled down, I removed the thermostat housing and found not a stuck thermostat, but a thermostat in four pieces.
I replaced that. I figured that the water wasn't being held in the radiator long enough for the electric cooling fans to cool it off, so that explained the over-heating.
I drove the car around town for about an hour with no further trouble.
Then, last night, my wife took it out for a short errand and the darned thing over-heated again. The temp warning light came on, and the gauge was pegged.
I couldn't believe it.
I called a bud who is a mechanic and he said that I probably needed to bleed the air out of the cooling system. There is a bleeder valve on the thermostat housing so, I added another gallon or so of water to the fill tank and then started the car and let it idle until the thermostat opened up and then the coolant began to shoot out of the bleeder valve (I caught it in a bucket). I let this go on for a while, hoping to make sure there were no air bubbles in the cooling system. Then I closed the valve off and let the car cool, and I poured the coolant from the bucket back into the over-fill tank.
I've driven the car about two hours since doing that, and have had no further problems. The temperature gauge seems to be settled down at around the half-way mark, but I don't know how hot that is, and I must admit that I don't know where it used to run prior to this debacle.
My problem is, I don't have total confidence that the engine is finished boiling over. I'm afraid to take the car more than a mile or two from the house.
Could a head gasket be leaking a bit? Maybe when the thermostat failed and the car over-heated it got so hot that a head warped? My bud (the mechanic) says that isn't likely, because if the gasket was blown the car wouldn't run cool for a while then all of a sudden just over-heat. But I still wonder.
There's no anti-freeze in the oil (that I can see or smell) and none coming from the tail pipe. So if there is a head gasket giving out, it's leeching compression into a cooling channel somehow, and over-pressurizing the cooling system.
Could it have been air bubbles in the cooling system that had things messed up?
I've never had such a problem, so I don't really know how to proceed from here...
Thanks for any advice, comments, or moral support.
Dan
The car overheated on my wife the other evening. She got it back home, and I found a pin-hole leak in a heater core line (aluminum pipe), and I repaired it. I just sanded off the paint, down to bare aluminum, used some plastic-steel stuff and made a patch, let that set, then wrapped the patched area with some rubber heater hose and used a hose clamp around that.
For good measure (or some would say bad measure) I put in a can of Barr's Leak.
I refilled the coolant tank and started the car and let the engine warm up, and noted no leaks anywhere.
After the car idled in the driveway about twenty to thirty minutes with no problems, I drove it down the street about a mile and that's when the gauge went all the way to H and the tank started boiling over... I had a 50/50 anti-freeze mix in there.
I got to a gas station and got a water hose and hosed the radiator down until the gauge moved back down about 1/2 way. The tank was too hot to remove the cap to add any more water. I drove back home, and by the time I got home, the gauge was nearly pegged at the H once again.
I thought that the thermostat might be stuck. So after the engine cooled down, I removed the thermostat housing and found not a stuck thermostat, but a thermostat in four pieces.
I replaced that. I figured that the water wasn't being held in the radiator long enough for the electric cooling fans to cool it off, so that explained the over-heating.
I drove the car around town for about an hour with no further trouble.
Then, last night, my wife took it out for a short errand and the darned thing over-heated again. The temp warning light came on, and the gauge was pegged.
I couldn't believe it.
I called a bud who is a mechanic and he said that I probably needed to bleed the air out of the cooling system. There is a bleeder valve on the thermostat housing so, I added another gallon or so of water to the fill tank and then started the car and let it idle until the thermostat opened up and then the coolant began to shoot out of the bleeder valve (I caught it in a bucket). I let this go on for a while, hoping to make sure there were no air bubbles in the cooling system. Then I closed the valve off and let the car cool, and I poured the coolant from the bucket back into the over-fill tank.
I've driven the car about two hours since doing that, and have had no further problems. The temperature gauge seems to be settled down at around the half-way mark, but I don't know how hot that is, and I must admit that I don't know where it used to run prior to this debacle.
My problem is, I don't have total confidence that the engine is finished boiling over. I'm afraid to take the car more than a mile or two from the house.
Could a head gasket be leaking a bit? Maybe when the thermostat failed and the car over-heated it got so hot that a head warped? My bud (the mechanic) says that isn't likely, because if the gasket was blown the car wouldn't run cool for a while then all of a sudden just over-heat. But I still wonder.
There's no anti-freeze in the oil (that I can see or smell) and none coming from the tail pipe. So if there is a head gasket giving out, it's leeching compression into a cooling channel somehow, and over-pressurizing the cooling system.
Could it have been air bubbles in the cooling system that had things messed up?
I've never had such a problem, so I don't really know how to proceed from here...
Thanks for any advice, comments, or moral support.
Dan
