[Island_Yota]

A coolant problem of course.

Symptoms:

- On a cold start, drive the car up to temp and its fine, then il be driving along and the gauge will spike to 3/4 then drop back down to normal in the span of about 5 seconds. Only does it one time, on a dead cold start after the car has warmed to normal temp. After it spikes I can drive it around all day and the gauge will sit perfectly normal.

- As the car cools off, it will push coolant from the rad into the overflow, until its full/over flowed, if I take the rad cap off the coolant will be down to about the top of the cooling fins, system has pressure when I take the cap off when the car is cold.

- Burped the system a week ago, cant get 100% of the air out, car takes forever to get warm, I actually put the rad cap on one click and drove it around the block to get it warm enough to burp.. im working on a hill, cap off, heat on max.





Rad has 10,000km's on it, Cap is brand new, Waterpump has 10,000km's, Fan shroud is on properly, Fan is working as it should, Heatercore is brand new, No mysterious leaks, no missing coolant. Only thing I have not changed is the thermostat(dumb). All I can think of is an excess of air in the system pushing the coolant out as the engine cools, or the head gasket is leaking exhaust into the system under load.. but the coolant/oil is clean, over flow tank does not bubble or do anything strange while its running and its also clean inside, it only fills up/overflows when the car is turned off and cools off to dead cold.

 

[Hitman]

Check your thermostat

 

[Island_Yota]

Any other suggestions?

 

[pockypowah]

This was happening to me recently. I thought it was the thermostat as well, changed it, and it was still spiking. (Coolant spilling into my overflow)

Eventually it went from just spiking to running slightly hotter than it should and overheating. I finally decided to take it apart, and lo-and-behold it was a BHG

I'm not saying its 100%, but definitely look into it.

 

[mikesupra87]

Sounds like a BHG..

 

[oldsking]

It's showing you the signs of it. If it's an OEM gasket and never changed then chances are you have a weekend of fun ahead of you

Mine did the same thing, I tried the burping but I said hell let me just do the HG and BAM that was the problem.

 

[Island_Yota]

I changed the thermostat last weekend and found out the old one had no gasket, burping it was much much easier, tons of air came out. But, now its back to filling the overflow. I just drove it 300km's on a little roadtrip, perfectly fine, didnt spill any coolant, overflow stayed at the proper level. Drove to a friends place last night, shut off the car and I could hear a weird noise, sure enough its pissing coolant out of the overflow tank, Pop the rad cap this morning and the coolant is down to the top of the cooling fins and the overflow is full to the top still. All of the overflow hoses are sealed, on the proper way and have no leaks, rad cap is new, 195* thermostat is new and working, rad is new, heatercore and water pump are new. If I shut off the car when its hot, pop the hood, then tap the top of the rad cap it will let pressure out into the overflow..



Really don't get it. I might just pull the head off, do the headgasket and sell the thing.

 

[boricua114]

yea its doing the same exact symptoms i had when i blew my head gasket, the temp would go up and down, the my coolant was disappearing, until one night i missed a gear and finally blew the gasket to hell, dont push it hard and change it asap before it gets worse, it happens in a snap of the finger that ur car just dumps all the coolant out your exhaust

 

[Island_Yota]

yea its doing the same exact symptoms i had when i blew my head gasket, the temp would go up and down, the my coolant was disappearing, until one night i missed a gear and finally blew the gasket to hell, dont push it hard and change it asap before it gets worse, it happens in a snap of the finger that ur car just dumps all the coolant out your exhaust

Well the temp stays totally normal now. The coolant isnt burning its just being pushed out when the car is cooling off, doesnt bubble or do anything weird while its running. If I top the rad off it will push it into the overflow while the coolant warms up, it doesnt bubble or anything though.