Hey guys,

I have a 98 v6 camaro with about 99,000 miles and got the water pump replaced last night. Started it up at the shop and drove it home just fine. Started it this morning, idled fine, then when i put it in reverse and tried getting it into gear it stalled. Thought it was my fault, tried again. When I started it it was the roughest start I've ever felt (never had any rough starts with my car). I check under the hood, looking for problems with what had just been replace and saw come coolant leaking out of the resevoir tank. I opened it and saw it was up to the brim with coolant, then i looked at the rad cap ready to check in there and saw it was on backwards with the arrows facing in the wrong directions. I take it off and a ****load of coolant spurts out of the top of the resevior tank. My question is, is the radiator cap being backwards my issue? or is there something worse here, and have any of you seen something like this? thanks for all your help.

 

First, if you open a radiator cap with the coolant being hot (if it was), it will spew out on you.
Not quite following what you mean by the cap being on "backwards" though. If you mean the cap was off 180 degrees from the arrow lining up, then no that doesn't matter. Not as long as the cap is on all the way and the tab is up against the step on the tank's neck. The arrow is there for easy reference, not because it has to line up on the same side.
Even so, a poor fitting cap isn't going to make the engine run rough either, unless you had a fountain spraying on the engine getting everything saturated.

 

Never heard of anyone doing such a dastardly deed. Seriously, the radiator cap goes in only one way. May be that it was left loose, or the wrong cap put on. And, as described above, the radiator cap does not affect how the engine runs. Don't be bashful, when you pick up a car from a repair shop take a look under the hood. You may be surprised at what you may see.

 

sounds like it just wasnt on very tight and yes when you open it hot no matter what kind of car you have it will spew out like that you gotta let it cool

 

Coolant did not spit out of the radiator, it shot out of the overflow bottle. I'm assuming that the cap must not have been on all the way but I still can't find an explanation as to why there was no problem driving it home but there was a problem the next morning.

 

First off, if anything shot out when you loosened the cap that means the rad was holding pressure. If the rad was holding pressure then the cap was not on wrong. Also the fact the coolant did not leak from the rad is reason enough to think the cap was on right. Caps only go on one way. When they are left loose they leak at the cap not into the overflow. When you have to much coolant going into the over flow that is due to a failing cap spring or too much pressure in the rad not how cap was installed.

This is the part you will not like.
Water pump fails, Car loose some coolant and will not hold pressure. Because there is no pressure the coolant boils and create air pockets. Now there are areas in the heads with air pockets that can not get any coolant. You take the car to a wrench to get the water pump fixed. Now the system will hold pressure! Your car does not see a lot of pressure until your ride home. Once the systems 15 PSI pushs on the area that was over heated due to the air and the head gasket fails. Since everything is all warmed and expanded up you dont notice anything. Once everything cools down everything goes to crap.

If this would happen I would expect coolant being pushed out everywhere and even a miss. I would love to say I figured all this out on my own but 20 plus years ago a mechanic told me anytime you get a call from a customer the day after a coolent system repair and its pushing out coolant they blew out a head gasket. Since then I have seen it a dozen + times. He aslo told me to expect the customer to blame you cause it didn't do it before. Simple fact is the damage was done before you ever took the car in for a water pump. It was the fact the the system could hold pressure that made it fail not the way the pump was installed.

Sorry.