I'm not great with cars, actually most of what I know has been shown to me by working on mine. This is my fixer upper car and lately I've been having trouble... When I start it up it runs rough for 30 secs to a min and then eases out of it usually this only happens once a day or unless the car has sat for awhile between starts. Im not sure but I may smell gas too when it starts but I believe it may be just after the first start of the day after its sat all night.

I also have been having trouble with it overheating... well not exactly getting to the point of it overheating.. let me try and explain. I have had work done on the engine. The freeze plugs had to be replaced on the back wall of the engine and then the one on the drivers side had to be replaced too. I have put a new fail safe therm in and flushed the system out. Did the K&W block sealer. Which has held perfectly. Though now.. the problem seems to be this... or atleast how its been explained to me.. the antifreeze is being pulled into the overfill and then theres suppose to be a suction that pulls it back into the radiator.. wellllllllll its not.. its pushing it out the cap of the overfill and then slowly my radiator is drying. which causes the temp to rise easier while idling or going at lower speeds. Works fine at higher speeds.. We checked for a leak and can't find anything.. I'm not sure what to do.. and at the moment I can't afford for it to go back into the shop.. any suggestions or help.. and like I said I don't know much about cars.. lol but im trying. thanks for reading.

 

You didn't say what car you have. So if it's fuel injected, it's possible one or more injectors are leaking as they sit, and flooding the cylinders.
Make sure your radiator cap has the right psi rating (I don't know if you have one or not because you didn't say what car you have). If it's too low a psi, it'll dump coolant out of the radiator and into the overflow tank before it's supposed to.

 

yep need to know what yr and what motor. unless its a contest to see who can guess the correct answer. if so i guess its a 92 305 fuel injection. did i win?

 

^ DAMN, you took my guess!!!

 

its a 95 and i bought a new radiator cap i think its 18 psi? maybe 16? i would go out an look but im watching my niece at the moment and shes fussy. it was holding fine its just been in the past couple weeks that it has started this problem.

 

pull and poke your hoses and look for a small leak. i had an issue like this and i had a really small leak by one of the clamps.

 

If you "pull and poke" your hoses, won't that cause a leak?
Guess it depends on what you poke them with, just don't use something like a ten penny nail.