Car Overheated / Overheating / Overheats [MERGED]

[NTRCOOL]

OVERHEATING? The issues and their solutions have remained the same- either you don't have enough cool air reaching the rad, there's a cooling system obstruction which is preventing coolant from circulating, or your head gasket has failed and is allowing coolant to be consumed or pushed away from the engine.

Discuss all possible overheating problems and solutions here.


OK,
I just left my house to go over to my GF's,and happen to look down and see my needle right before the red mark. This just happened out of nowhere. I stop the car as quickly as i can, and pour in some coolant(Coolant a little low). Still same thing. Welp im in the middle of the road, and HAD to get it home. Im only 5 min from my house. I decided to try and make it(I really had no other choice). Welp I drive no faster than 20mph, and the temp needle is BARELY into the red the whole way.And occasionaly to the left of it. Am I ok?? Do ya think any damage was done?? And im thinking either thermostat, or water pump. For each of those, whats a round about $$ figure to get replaced?? Any info you have would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[Lordpaxin]

how did you remove the belt?
the only way that could affect engine temps are if the waterpump is not working now.

and if i am not mistaken, the timing belt turns that? but i dont know fro sure.

could you have misaligned one of the belts by accident? and over time, it wore the side of it, and ate it up, and that flew over and hit the other belts or someting?

definatley check your water pumpo

 

[laserblue]

•I'm not near my car now so I do not know exactly what belt goes where but..... If the A/C belt only raps around one other pulley [the A/C compressor] then there is no reason that it would cause overheating if you removed it. If your removal caused another belt to bind, or jump, then break, then it probably is the cause of your overheat.
•Also...... I don't see the need to remove the A/C belt at all, since the A/C compressor pulley is totally 'free wheeling' when the A/C is not on!!!
Am I correct?

 

[Lordpaxin]

I dont know if its 100% free wheeling, many take it off, to free up flywheel HP, ive heard it many times, and i guess to some degree it would take a small amount of power to spin it, however minimal it may be.

also, one less belt to break and tear up stuff.


the only thing in the vicinity of thebelts that would affect the temperature and all, may be the waterpump, did you take that belt of by mistake?

 

[ArticNemesis]

I see you have a 91..

Have you ever replaced the crank pulley.? If not, when you removed the ac belt, you probably created an unequal force across the pulley (more tension on one side of the pulley than when the ac belt *used to be on the other side..) So the uneven force sped up the separation of the rubber ring of the "old, worn out" crank pulley.?

Just a thought, maybe right, maybe wrong..

But when the crank pulley separates, it usually shreds the belts attached to it.. Crank pulley feeds the water pump / alternator / ac. water pump pulley feeds the power steering pump.. So the over heating was probably right when the belt shredded, and no more functioning water pump. =(

 

[BUCK]

ArcticNemesis has an excellent theory - is your Crank Pulley Original?

BTW - IMO your not gonna see any 'power' increase pulling that belt - & if I were gonna take it off I'd just cut the AC belt being you HAD to detention your Alternator / Water pump belt to remove the AC belt. My bet is you put the Alternator / Water Pump belt back on the INNER pully instead of the OUTER pulley where it goes & smoked the belt.

 

[ArticNemesis]

I wasn't saying he ran the belt across the wrong set of threads on the crank pulley, which is also a possibility. I was trying to say that an overtensioned (or even correctly tensioned) belt putting all that strain on one side of the pulley started to tear the rubber dampener at a faster rate than it would have normally.. That is theory.

What I do know from experience is that when the crank pulley separates, it tends to take the belts connected to the pulley with it.

 

[loreak]

my crank pulley took none of my belts with when it broke, and i doubt putting one belt on would have any real world effects on the rate at which the pulley wore out

he probably took the belt off and put the alternator belt back on the wrong part of the crank pulley and it snapped the belt

you gain NO power from removing the a/c belt, it would be the equivalent of saying i took a crap so i weigh 3 lb's less and therefore i am faster then now because i weigh less

 

[laserblue]

Wow!!! Three pounds - "What a dump."
....... I didn't think that there was any power advantage by removing the A/C belt [see my post above], and loreak agrees.

 

[Lordpaxin]

well, i took off my ac, and replaced it with a Jspec Type R carbon fiber APC altezza cold air circulation ventulation system and it jumped my horse 12%

nah, actually, its just one less thing to scew up.
i didnt want to pay to get it recharged so i just took it off, well, actually my helper (terrible) took it off. . so i had no choice but to be without it, haha.

 

[loreak]

oh you have the new "Jspec Type R carbon fiber APC altezza cold air circulation ventulation system", i was wondering if they actually worked...im definately getting one now, maybe two..i could really use 24% more power

 

[RoasT BeeF]

hahahahahahahahaha:laugh:


damn post whores...

 

[LikeUnoSheit]

My sister just replaced her water pump in a 96 tsi awd and shes not the crazy driver i am @ 67K miles. I've got 125K on my tsi and just noticed a slight leak in what i hope is just the water pump and nothing else.. hard to tell on these cramped engines. Replaced thermostat. Upper radiotor hose seems to swell, done this for probably a yr..never bursted or anything..but im sure this cant be normal. At stop lights if i sit too long the temp gauge rises a little too high..not to red but more than normal, upon acceleration temp decreases (water pump speeds up), Never noticed fans coming on for awhile though also. THis problem occured awhile back, but happens so periodically its hard to determine the problem. What the hell is going on?

 

[FallouT]

when driving my car the temp is normal when moving. but when im at a light or idleing for a few, the temp gauge will shoot up to the top. but once i start moving again the gauge drops back to normal temp within a few seconds.

this leads me to believe my car is not accutally overheating, but mabye the sensor is messed up. what do you think? my fans are running, and the hoses feel warm but not HOt. im stumped

 

[BUCK]

Check water pump belt for wear - try a new thermostat - I'd run a 180 - 185, - if not that your radiator could need flushing or possibly a worn water pump - Good Luck

 

[turbolover2]

When that scenario occurs (ok while moving, hot while idling) you have air in the system (usually). Check for coolant leaks, I'm sure you'll find one. If it's a 1G (or even an older 2G), all the small coolant hoses (to the turbo, oil cooler, throttle body, etc.) get real soft and spongy. They just love to break and piss put all your coolant in small, hardly noticeable streams. Check those. They are all in tough to get to places, but don't skip over them.

 

[EckoEclipse]

My car did something very similar, I pulled the temp sensor and sure enough my sensor was white as fuc* and was not working too well, I didn't know that at the time, but it doesn't cost much at all with the sensor, gasket, and sealer. I think I spent a total of $15 bucks, and even if it was not it, at least its preventative maintaince.

 

[FallouT]

those are all good ideas, but heres the thing. i a new water pump, new thermostat, cap, and i just replaced all the hoses around the engine, there were like 7 total.

im thinking theres air in the system, or my sensor is bad.
how do i get the air out? and where can i find a new sensor?

 

[FallouT]

also, i checked out my fansm and they seem to work fine. both are on when idleing.

 

[jbillakdsm]

You can get the air out of your system by taking the radiator cap off while the car is sitting and let it idle till it gets warm and starts to circulate the coolant, eventually the air will work itself out of there. Your sensor may be jacked though because of the superheating from the air pocket.

 

[Eliminat0r]

Okay here's the problem my car will overheat on long trips like after an hour or more of driving. I changed the thermostat, and flush and filled the coolant system, im pretty sure it's not a bad HG because there are no signs that it is. Also when it overheats the temp gauge needle will start to climb then go back down when i accelerate and i eventually pull it over and the coolant in the resevoir will be boiling. The only thing i ahevnt done is put a new Rad cap on would a bad radiator cap cause it to overheat like that or could i be overlooking something.

 

[Doug99RS]

It is possible that you have a bad cap. It is important to explain what happened first. Did the coolant start blowing out BEFORE the gauge started climbing or the other way around? Frequently a cap will lose it's ability to hold the specified amount of pressure and will allow coolant to go in to the resevior and then on to the ground. I would recomend replacing the cap first. Make sure you get one with the right pressure reading on it because changing it will change the coolant's boiling point and allow coolant to leak out in to the resevior. It's a quick and easy part you can replace at minimal cost. Anything above that and you'll need to do some more research and diagnostic work before replacing any parts.
Doug

 

[Eliminat0r]

whats happening is the gauge will start to fluctuate then when i pull over ill notice the coolant in the resevoir is boiling and leaking onto the ground.

 

[Doug99RS]

I'm dealing with a blown headgasket on a customer's pt cruiser at the moment. The symptoms are: Loss of coolant over a year's period with no external leakage, thermostat has been punched out (if it were bad it could stick closed causing the overheating condition, without one the coolant typically will not get hot enough for operating temp), coolant boils out in to resevior, coolant guage reads normal until all the coolant is boiled out.

My testing was this:
-Pressure tested the cap, found it to be bad, replaced it.
-pressure tested coolant system, no pressure drop, system tested good
-replaced thermostat with new one and started testing again to verify
customer complaint.
-complaint verified. Found tiny coolant bubbles to be developing at thermostat/filler neck. On the PT you remove the cap and look straight down at the t-stat. Now I used the terminology "bubbles devoloping" but it was more like bubbles being blown. It was not just bubbles from coolant flow or air purging at the t-stat. This was more like your little brother or sister blowing tiny spit bubbles, physically forcing the air out not just aggitation from coolant passages or the water pump.
-Next I took the pt up to our emissions analyzer (I know not everyone has one of these lying around) and drained some coolant out. I stuck the tail pipe wiffer slightly in to the filler neck and check my HC (hydrocarbon) reading. I was reading anywhere from 80 to 180 parts per million of HC. To give you a comparison I also performed an inspection on my neon tonight. In the exhaust pipe my reading was 57 ppm. So my car's exhaust has less unburned gas in it, at idle, than this pt's coolant. The headgasket is blown allowing combustion chamber gasses to enter the coolant passages at the headgasket.
-I've pulled the head off and the headgasket is blown between cylinders 2 & 3. Here's a pic below.

 

[RoasT BeeF]

Indeed, Doug has some very interesting stories/pics. I want his job.

 

[Eliminat0r]

coolant is still in the resevoir when the temp starts to jump up and down, I hope its not a HG. Well when the rad cap comes in in 2 days i hope it fixes it.