CamaroRS385hp

ok, my car's bein stupid. i posted this in the gen. tech engine board but need a second opinion. ok today after i came back from driving for 20 minutes, i turned off my car and steam started pourin outta the top of the hood on the passenger side. it just turned 120,000 miles on wednesday, so i guess it felt the need to celebrate a little by giving me my first problem with it ever. it smelled strong of antifreeze and soon it had drained the water tank dry. i found what was releasing the steam though. in the bottom right corner of the picture is a black cap kinda thing. when i'd push it, the steam would stop, and when i let off the steam would start back up, so i guess there's a crack in there somewhere. also, it didnt start until tonight but my car's overheating BAD. i didnt want to drive my car anymore till i fixed it, but i was at a friends house and needed to come home so i drove it home. i watched the temp needle go steadily up, and after 2 minutes, the temerature had gone from very cool (it was off for 4 hours) to WAY past the 260* mark. i had to stop halfway home so i wouldn't melt my engine into a solid piece. in the gen. tech engine board, one guy said he thought it was my heater valve. is that what yall think too? is that black cap in the bottom right of the pic the heater valve? if not, where is it? i've never messed with any of this before so i'm in the dark completely about this whole issue. any help would be appreciated. i just dont wanna have to resort to takin the car into the shop, but i gotta get it fixed by sunday at the latest or it's goin to the shop. thanks yall

CamaroRS385hp

the pic:

CamaroRS385hp

damnit...sorry i messed up and hit submit but it wouldnt let me go back and add the pic. so here it is, for real this time: (the bigger box was from before, when i only knew the general area of the leak, but the smaller box shows the exact place)

Nixon1

Unless I'm mistaken...I think that black sucker is some sort of vacuum solenoid or device... Is 260 degrees the red line? If you went past that.....well.....wow. Good luck....I'd expect the motor to be toast..

CamaroRS385hp

yeah 260 is the red line. my engine seemed to be doing fine, but yeah i guess it could have caused damage that won't show up for a little while. it was way WAY past that mark too. i did the best i could, i stopped twice on the way home (a 10 minute trip), but like i said before, it only took 2 minutes to get past 260* so i had no choice really but to drive for a little while past that temp. my engine fan was on the whole time, but didnt do any good, and i heard that turning the heat on helps cool the engine off a little, so i had it on full blast the whole way to minimize damage. unless i get a definite answer on what is wrong, i guess i'll be taking my car to the shop. i dont want to risk doing something wrong. i guess my only consolation is that i'm getting a new engine after the summer, so if it can last that long then it's fine. so you don't know what or where a "heater valve" is? that's my only lead so far on what's wrong. it just seems weird cause it was perfectly fine one minute, and then once i shut the car off earlier today, the problems started. oh well, thanks for the input. if anyone knows what's wrong, please help me out!

Nixon1

For it to overheat like that man...hell my electric fan failed on my car and it has no heater core either..the rad boiled over but the temp never went past maybe 230 or 240 and I stopped it...refilled it and drove her home fast as I could to get air to the radiator. Sorry...don't know what a heater valve is...but I assume it's in some relation to the heater core....my guess is that it directs heated water from the engine into the heater core to work the heater....... If that valve is leaking or something, then I suppose it would blow superheated water out.... Makes sense to me......

89V6FBIRD

Heater diverter valve, that's failed on my car too. Pick it up at any auto parts store. Costs like $15 max. Replace, refill, you should be good to go.

CamaroRS385hp

ok i just found out some new info..wanna run it by yall and see what you think...

somebody told me:

it could be my thermostat, cause they sometimes get stuck closed. they said the thermostat is what allows coolant to pass through, so if it's closed, the coolant will find another way to move through the pipes (i.e. the steam). also, since the coolant isn't getting through, the engine isn't getting cooled so it heats up quick as hell.

does this sound right to you guys? tommorow i'm goin out to check the thermo. and the water pump

89V6FBIRD - where exactly is the heater diverter valve at? and what does it look like?

89V6FBIRD

That's what you circled in the pic. Or rectangled...

kingrobert

if you went past redline and still running the engine, replace the oil NOW. otherwise you'll cause more damage. anytime you go past or close to redline it's a good idea to change the oil.

TechSmurf

Heater Core Diverter Valve: --------- 15 bucks
New Thermostat/Gasket Maker: ----- 6 bucks
Fresh Oil and Filter: ------------------- 12 bucks
All of us laughing if your motor
blows because you didn't do all
of the simple things above: --------- Priceless

Nixon1

Lol...
To answer your question....I'd say it's fairly likely that your thermostat might have stuck in the closed position. Most modern thermostats are designed to fail in the open position to save your motor, but older ones or the stock one, I'm not sure about. It's a simple and cheap job though so if you're not sure about it, might as well give it a shot. Just remove the upper rad hose and the spout it's attached to on the engine...the thermostat sits in there. Just make sure you install the new one facing the right way, and get a good gasket for it.

CamaroRS385hp

how the HELL do you get the spout that attatches from the radiotor hose to the engine off?i've unplugged wires, taken off the main belt, taken off the induction tubing, and for the life of me, i still can't get any leverage at all on either of the two bolts. anybody got any suggestions, it's been 2 hours of going nowhere and i'm startin to get pissed off

CamaroRS385hp

here's some pics of where the bolts are, just for reference:

#1

CamaroRS385hp

#2

krazycracka55

over heating sucks.
the first time my car was over heating i had a short in my wires, underneath the overflow tank
the second time i took a bump to hard and lodge the fan to close to the radiator so it wouldnt turn on when supposed to, jammed against the radiator.
me not paying attention to the heat temp cuased the radiator to explode
so buying a new radiator, a good 120$
when if i had caught it earlier i would have known that it was just the fan motor was fried, which was only a 20$ part
ive had to replce the heater core as well in my car since i got it and that black heater temp vlve thingy, haha, as well
:lala:

Erin91RS

i had problems overheating too. I had to replace my hoses cuz they were all collapsed. Also put a 180* thermostat in. It still was overheating. So i bought a new water pump and radiator cap. I put the new radiator cap on first and BINGO! no more overheating. It hasn't gone past 200 degrees. I returned that water pump and i haven't had any more problems. i heard if the cap doesn't pressurize right, it can cause the car to overheat too.

Nixon1

I imagine the cap would only be a problem if it didn't seal right. Because the radiator is a closed, pressurized system (around 16 psi), if the cap doesn't seal, the pressure will be released and you will probably get boil-over into the coolant overflow tank.

Erin91RS

my old cap had a lot of gunk all stuck underneath it. I washed it all out and it still overeated. That's when I decided to buy a new one and that seemed to solve my problem. I bought a new cap for 4 bucks at advance auto. It was a fair price and it fixed my problem

CamaroRS385hp

well guys, the car's goin to the shop. it only took about 20 minutes to take everything off the engine i needed to get to the bolts that hold on the housing for the thermostat, but after 2 hours i had gotten nowhere. i couldn't get the bolts to budge. there wasn't enough room for leverage w/o taking the whole throttle body off. plus a few metal hoses for which i'd have to buy new seals for. and even taking it all off, i'm not sure i could get the leverage to get 'em off. luckily i know a guy that's gonna fix it for free, i'm just pissed i spent so much time and got so close, and then had to resort to a mechanic. oh well, i learned some new stuff. well thanks for the help yall, but with a 45 hr/week job, i dont have any more time so it's gettin turned over to more experienced hands. (sigh)

white89v6

this isnt a fbody but my blazer 2.8L has been overheating for some time. first thing i did was change the thermostate no change, second i pulled the radiator and put on from anothe blazer- this worked it ran 210 all the time for a weak the car was quiter too. now two weaks later its up to 260 again. WTF i flushed the radiator and put new fluid in when i changed it. is my pump not pumping. or could it be the dreaded headgasket
leaking colant into the oil system. when i changed the radiator the colant didnt have any oil in it but the colant seams to dissaper without any leaks

TomP

You could've used a universal (swivel) socket on the housing bolts. You could also use an open ended wrench, but that's a pain in the butt.

As far as the heater diverter valve, I'm so glad they started those things in '87. That means my '86 doesn't have one! (And if I had an 87-up f-body motor (didn't matter v6 or v8), you can bet I'd be bypassing that SOB and getting it the hell off my engine.

CamaroRS385hp

i tried the swivel socket and an open ended wrench on the bolts, but no luck. for the one on the left side (pass. side), one of the belt driven accessories was is in the way. i was just gonna take it off so i could get to that left bolt, but the right bolt area was so tight that the swivel socket wouldn't move more than 1/2 inch at the handle, which wasn't enough to start turning the bolt. so if i couldn't get the right bolt off, there was no point in taking off that part on the left side to get to that bolt.

so the frustration of all this, plus the fact that the thermostat may not even have anything to do with my overheating, plus the fact that i need the car running tuesday, means it's unfortunately going to the shop first thing tommorow morning.

Gumby

DO you still have your AC stuff in the car???

I can help you get it cooler but it may run to cool.

With my AC raidator removed and with my home made air dam installed, my car run near the blue line or lower. withthe heat on the temp gets even lower. It is not in the best operation range but it runs well and I get better oil PSI.

Remove the air damand and use my fan again and it will run in the green zone but my fan likes to stick on and kill my batt or it just runs and runs when its not needed. which is more anoying than seeing it run to cool all the time.

Matt

CamaroRS385hp

well i'd look into that but the car left a couple hours ago on a tow truck (sniff) i hate seein my car go...i feel like it's going into surgery and i might never see it again. oh well, it'll be better in a day or two. the car needed to go to the shop for some AC repair (i had a free coupon, otherwise i might have considered just yanking it instead of repairing it) so i figured to go ahead and hand the overheating problem to them. by this point, i just need the thing running again, by whatever means neccessary

clasbya

My problem is also related to overheating which I am going to check the thermostat. The only problem is that my thermo stat is the least of my worries. My fan wont switch on. I tried using ac as the override but still no go. I had the coolant fan relay checked at autozone, it sounded like it works still. I then just recently replaced the coolant fan switch. The fan was also tested directly with power to it. Is there a way to test the circuitry with the car not running. The car not wanting to start or running with a rough idle is another one of my problems that just seemed to flair up in my face.

AGood2.8

The picture associated to this quote was what I was trying to reference- anyways- this is the perfect example where my TB bypass tip with the Earl's fitting would clean up that area and give you room to remove the intake coolant neck. Here's a pic that shows how much room I have.

CamaroRS385hp

so what did you actually do? is all you did is remove this section?

AGood2.8

Basically yes. I removed the bottom coolant plate on the throttle body entirely. Removed the two rubber hoses. then removed thecoolant hardline from the intake manifold and replaced it with some Earl's fittings- this way I dont have the bypass hose "loop" that everyone else has, I completely removed those bottom hose barbs and freed up lots of room to work on things.

CamaroRS385hp

so any benefit besides more working room/cleaner bay?

Nixon1

Some say a slight power increase but...I highly doubt it.

AGood2.8

Nope, not for me. Just cleaning up the engine bay- no power difference.