Cooling Issues Pt. 2
 

Well, I made a thread about this around xmas time, and I had the car checked out afterwards. The tech that saw it could not replicate the issue that happened to me a 2nd time, so he started bleeding the cooling system. Before that, I had taken the thermostat out so water/anti-freeze would actually go inside the engine instead of heating up extremely quickly. So after that ordeal happened, I noticed that the car heated up to what it would normally heat up to (180/200 deg. F) WITH a thermostat.. keep in mind that the car has no thermostat. The car would then reach the 210F mark but wouldn't raise further than that.

I then took it for a drive, turned on the heater and the strangest thing happened... the car's temperature dipped all the way to 160F (What it should be without a thermostat) and STAYED there. That was all good until I reached traffic, in which case it was in between the 160 mark and the 210 mark. (this is assuming the dash between 100 and 210 is 160) Usually I call the spot the needle is before dead center "180/200" since that's the approx area considering dead center is 210. Another interesting thing is that once the car is off, it will spray water into the reservoir, but if I take the cap off, it sprays all of its guts out. Usually from what I've seen on other cars, the radiator spits water out when hot, but not its entire guts, to the point it takes a whole bottle of dexcool 50/50 to refill it. So with that being said, what should I start looking at to figure out why the car heats up while standing, but cools down while running? I'm not running anything special or modified on the car, it's all stock minus the sound system but that has nothing to do with this lol

The thermostat helps to stabilize the coolant temperature inside the engine, as well as allow the coolant to hang around inside the radiator to cool it down some. With having no stat in place, I'm not surprised at all that your engine temps are jumping all over the place. Put a thermostat back in. And, when hot, the cooling system is under pressure, which is why it sprays out when you remove the cap. You can get severely burned doing that, it's not recommended.

I thought the purpose of a thermostat was to keep the engine at a preset operating temperature... when the engine got to a certain heat, the t-stat would open, and when it cooled off, it would close, hence an engine without a t-stat would just circulate all of the dexcool mix; at least that was what I've seen before. Then again, the last car I drove statless was a 1996 4 banger and that car simply didn't heat up all the way.

Anyways, I guess I'll go ahead and put it back in. I just don't like the fact that I've gone through 4 of them and they continue to do what I mentioned, except at a higher temperature (standing it goes to the mark before 260 and running it cools off to 210), so I know something else is wrong... I just can't figure out what.

I know the whole radiator thing is stupid of me, but I've tried burping the radiator the old fashioned way (running it with no cap, put water in as necessary, let it bubble, cap it when there's no more bubbles) and I've had the water just spray out every now and then, followed by a thumping sound.

The fact you heater is changing the temps in the motor indicates either you fans at the rad is not working right or you have a flow issue in your radiator.

Any system with an over flow system does not need bled unless there is a high spot in the system higher than the cap. I don't know what car or engine you have so I do not know it yours has a bleeder.

I would also do a pressure test, just to be sure you system is not getting "pressure" from someplace else when its hot.

Sorry about that, it's a 3800. I thought with the post being in the V6 tech, it would have been implied. :icon_sad:

It does have a bleeder screw, and I've bleed it through that as well which essentially fixed the issue from my first thread where the car would heat up. I'm still not sure of the water over in between the ledge of the valve covers and intake manifold, but I'm thinking it's a one time thing as the tech couldn't replicate that issue.

Now this might sound very dumb, but how do I do a pressure test? I know I have to get the tool from the parts store, but how exactly does it work?

Youtube is your friend. You can search for just about anything.

Actually, me and youtube are beefing because I can't seem to find a good video on how to swap out the LIM on a 3800 Camaro. I can only find it for the FWD version of the engine, which is great and all, but the FWD cars didn't have their engines under the firewall

All jokes aside, thanks for the link. I'll check it out and see what happens from there. Hopefully I can get this car running soon.

Car year/model specific stuff is luck of the draw. Normally you can find the basics like how in test a battery or a charging system, things like that.