Overheating Very Quickly

[m3x1c0]

Hey guys. Still getting this thing to be roadworthy. Fixed the fan wiring on the car so that it actually works which is cool. Problem is the car seems to suddenly be overheating. Drove the car to work yesterday and she ran great but thats only a few miles. Drove downtown like 15 minutes and still was keeping nice and cool. Drove home from their a few hours later and gave her a WOT pull on the highway. The car very suddenly started to overheat. I had to pull over quickly and coast home. Waited an hour or so and looked in the radiator. Some coolant went bye bye after it got hot but I looked in the radiator and a good amount was gone so I topped it off and went for a drive. I turned the AC switch on in the car so that the radiator fan stayed on its high setting. Drove about 10 minutes and she kept under the midpoint on the temp gauge. Pulled a few WOT runs and still the needle kept right at the center. Did some in-town driving under 35 about ten minutes: still nice and cool. Got pulled over about 1/4 mile from home for running a stop sign. That took about 25 minutes for them to let me go. The car was off the whole time. This is where things get crazy.

Im coasting downhill on the last tiny stretch to get home and the needle starts to climb. In less then 1/8 mile the needle is all the way up almost in the red line. I coast to my house and let it run for a bit. pop open the hood and its not tossing coolant anywhere so it cant be that hot yet.

Some factors that may contribute. When I got the car it was leaking like a sieve from the intake manifold. Re-did the intake gaskets and she still leaks a bit of oil. I think the ungraded bolts the intake had arent holding because I could barely get them to stay at 20 ft-lb. Im planning on redoing this with new grade 8's. I figured maybe coolant is leaking down from the intake but a quick analysis of the dipstick shows no sign of coolant and the car is not smoking at all. One other thing is the fan I used is out of a 4 cylinder car. Couldnt find a taurus fan so I improvised. Still at high setting seems to be keeping it cool enough.

I'm super confused as to why this would happen in such a short time just coasting and driving normal. I did let the car run a few minutes before putting the cap on the radiator to get the air gaps out. Any ideas?

 

[Miss5.0]

I am thinking the radiator maybe? Because mine was having similiar symptoms. And I changed it from stock to an aluminum 3 row radiator, and he was running like a champ until the water pump went.. then I ended up redoing my cooling system (water pump, thermostat, thermostat housing, timing cover) like anything once you fix one thing another thing goes! haha but now he has been running good ever since I did all that.

 

[jka]

Check the fan wiring again because if you hot wired it so it will stay running.Then the fan could turning the wrong way and pushing the hot air out instead of pulling in the cold air..causing it to run hot.

 

[90sickfox]

What size is the fan and what did it come out of ? I've had great luck with jeep Cherokee v8 electric fans. With a little modification they fit right in the factory shroud...plus they're two speed fans.

 

[Noobz347]

Hey guys. Still getting this thing to be roadworthy. Fixed the fan wiring on the car so that it actually works which is cool. Problem is the car seems to suddenly be overheating. Drove the car to work yesterday and she ran great but thats only a few miles. Drove downtown like 15 minutes and still was keeping nice and cool. Drove home from their a few hours later and gave her a WOT pull on the highway. The car very suddenly started to overheat. I had to pull over quickly and coast home. Waited an hour or so and looked in the radiator. Some coolant went bye bye after it got hot but I looked in the radiator and a good amount was gone so I topped it off and went for a drive. I turned the AC switch on in the car so that the radiator fan stayed on its high setting. Drove about 10 minutes and she kept under the midpoint on the temp gauge. Pulled a few WOT runs and still the needle kept right at the center. Did some in-town driving under 35 about ten minutes: still nice and cool. Got pulled over about 1/4 mile from home for running a stop sign. That took about 25 minutes for them to let me go. The car was off the whole time. This is where things get crazy.

Im coasting downhill on the last tiny stretch to get home and the needle starts to climb. In less then 1/8 mile the needle is all the way up almost in the red line. I coast to my house and let it run for a bit. pop open the hood and its not tossing coolant anywhere so it cant be that hot yet.

Some factors that may contribute. When I got the car it was leaking like a sieve from the intake manifold. Re-did the intake gaskets and she still leaks a bit of oil. I think the ungraded bolts the intake had arent holding because I could barely get them to stay at 20 ft-lb. Im planning on redoing this with new grade 8's. I figured maybe coolant is leaking down from the intake but a quick analysis of the dipstick shows no sign of coolant and the car is not smoking at all. One other thing is the fan I used is out of a 4 cylinder car. Couldnt find a taurus fan so I improvised. Still at high setting seems to be keeping it cool enough.

I'm super confused as to why this would happen in such a short time just coasting and driving normal. I did let the car run a few minutes before putting the cap on the radiator to get the air gaps out. Any ideas?

Well lay the confusion portion to rest. You had (may still have) air in your cooling system. It explains all of the symptoms. You should see fewer and fewer sudden temp climbs so long as you keep replacing fluid and are not leaking it anywhere.

The fan... This whole thing has got HACK JOB *cough* written all over it. Do a little bit of looking for a genuine no chit fan controller, a real OEM quality electric fan complete with SHROUD. If your current fan setup is in-fact wired in reverse (as another member mentioned above) then you would see a slow increase to hot while at cruise speeds. Air wants to flow front to back... that's how the car was designed. If the fan in pushing the other directions then weird things begin to happen. Double check.


Don't do anything until you get the intake squared away. Everything else is pretty much a waste of time until that's done. There are some great threads in this forum with step by step procedures for installing an intake.

 

[m3x1c0]

Filled up the radiator while the car was running and made sure that sumbitch was full! Drove around for a good while including stop and go traffic for 15 minutes yesterday: Needle stays in the middle! great fixed right? Nope. Drove today for about half the distance and was great. Parked about 5 minutes away from work to get coffee. Wait in traffic for about 10 minutes to get to work. I looked down and noticed it was about to go in red. Pulled into work as fast as possible and shut it down/ popped the hood. I felt the drivers side of the radiator and it was relatively cool. Felt the upper hose and it was definitely hot. Felt the radiator lid and it was warm but could still palm it no problem. Push down on one edge of it and steam starts to hiss its way out. I held it down for a a bit and could hear it bubbling up. Felt the radiator side again and could tell it was WAY warmer. At this point Im aware of at least 2 gallons of coolant I put in the car. Again she isnt smoking.

Next up to look at: double check its got enough coolant (good god it must take a ton), Then Ill test the thermostat, Try a new radiator cap. The alternator was relocated to the other side of the motor in the most ghetto way (dont judge me, I bought the car this way) Im thinking maybe the belt isnt getting enough of a bite on the water pump possibly? Any other suggestions friends?

 

[MFE92]

Is the fan wired with the correct polarity so it actually blows front to back, or is it reversed and trying to push air forward?

 

[m3x1c0]

Yes fan is wired correctly. No wiring isnt the best but it is working for now.

 

[m3x1c0]

Mystery somewhat solved gents. Went out just now to check the car now that it is cool. Radiator is halfway empty. Oil is nice and milky :/ Is there a good way to check if the intake isnt sealing or if it is a headgasket before I tear it down? I figure I can do a compression test but will that even tell me anything about where the internal leak is coming from?

 

[m3x1c0]

Went and grabbed a block tester (The kind with the blue fluid.) Tested twice both came up showing no exhaust getting into the radiator. Going to do a compression test now. Be back to post numbers in a sec

 

[m3x1c0]

Took me a bit to get those compression numbers. Had to damn gt40 heads and the turbo headers meant very very little room to get the sparks out, let alone fit the compression tester hose in their. I dont have the card I wrote the numbers down on with me but working from memory the passenger side was 1- 130, 2-135, 3-130, 4- 140. Then the driver side was 5-135, 6-130, 7-145, 8-135.

Cylinder 7 was actually the first one I started with (its the hardest to get to with these headers). Because I was concerned at how much higher it was than the others I retested this one after the all the rest and got 150psi! Is this actually a problem?

Either way, the engine has good compression across all the cylinders. This result in combination with the chemical block tester tells me that the headgasket is in fact not blown. However, the fact remains that the oil has coolant in it. So I dug a little deeper. I popped open the intake and found this:

Ok so definitely getting coolant and oil into the intake. Can anyone explain how this would end up all the way up here? Does this show that my intake gasket is compromised?

I continued to tear down so that I can at least access the intake gasket. I've removed all of the stuff in the way of the intake and now just need to pull it off and check inside but was getting tired so I decided to call it a night before pulling the intake. Before I left I figured I would pull the drivers side valve cover since that side had a very loud tick. Boy oh boy was it grody:

Did somebody order creamer in their coffee?

So the milkshake looks pretty bad for just an intake leak. Though I suppose anything is possible. Will it be obvious what went wrong with the intake if I pull it? I followed several instructions online very carefully. How could I have possibly messed it up this bad? Is it possible that despite the test results I do indeed have a bad headgasket? So many questions! I'd appreciate anybodies input! thanks!

 

[smkshw]

Wow... That's not good for the engine....lol

If it wasn't blowing smoke,and the tests checked out,my guess would be lower intake gasket...would be an easy fix though good luck!

 

[m3x1c0]

Wow... That's not good for the engine....lol

If it wasn't blowing smoke,and the tests checked out,my guess would be lower intake gasket...would be an easy fix though good luck!

Yes I'm very much concerned for the bearings. I've never checked bearings on a motor that was still in the car before but I may have to figure out how to do so with this one. Like I said, I followed intake directions to a T. Unless those intake bolts were so marginal that it did not seal I'm not sure how I screwed that up. I'm still suspicious of the headgaskets though.

 

[m3x1c0]

Btw it was ran like this for about 30 miles maybe more

I should also mention this motor has been built before. Not sure who did it or what was done but those lifters and the ARP Head bolts tell me they had an idea of what they were doing. It'd be a shame to ruin this motor. The ARP bolts also tell me those HG's are on there pretty good. Doubt the heads lifted under boost. Really hoping its just the intake.

 

[smkshw]

i hear the gaskets tend to slip,mine actualy leaked though a bolt and water ended up sitting in the intake bolt creves,re did it and all it well,but that would be your best case,unless somone else has another opinnion,intake is not "that"much work to take a look,should be able to see if it was leaking

 

[m3x1c0]

Here's what we got. Don't really see a smoking gun. Is the presence of sludge in the valley an indication that it was the intake gasket?

 

[stang89bidges]

If it were me, I would go ahead and pop the heads off while your there. If you trying to keep cost down, head gaskets are only $35 for those heads. Trust me, I have been there. Got a big thread on it ;-)

Plus, you get to see what kind of shape things are in, help you sleep at night. If you end up having head gaskets blown, well then your really going to save some time and money as you won't be doing all this and buying all the parts....again.

As for the bearings(and again, just my opinion here, not an expert) I wouldn't worry too much about them at this point. You go tearing into those you might as well be rebuilding the dang engine. I'm assuming this is a street ride, not a track car?

 

[stang89bidges]

We posted at the same time I think.... That looks like a sure intake gasket leak. Could get lucky here. May not need to pull heads after seeing this. But. Your already here. If you have never been in this engine, I would be taking a gander to see what condition those pistons and cylinder walls are in.

EDIT: Presence of sludge in the lifter valley doesn't mean its your intake gasket necessarily. If water got in your oil somewhere else(heads for example) it simply means your oil pump is circulating that oil around in the whole engine and its getting whipped up is all in the lifter valley.

 

[m3x1c0]

We posted at the same time I think.... That looks like a sure intake gasket leak. Could get lucky here. May not need to pull heads after seeing this. But. Your already here. If you have never been in this engine, I would be taking a gander to see what condition those pistons and cylinder walls are in.

EDIT: Presence of sludge in the lifter valley doesn't mean its your intake gasket necessarily. If water got in your oil somewhere else(heads for example) it simply means your oil pump is circulating that oil around in the whole engine and its getting whipped up is all in the lifter valley.

I'm just not sure how its leaking. The intake was stuck on pretty good. I didnt verify torque but all the bolts were pretty dang tight. I've heard its possible for a head gasket to fail in such a way that coolant mixes in with oil but does not get in combustion chamber. Or maybe if the head cracked? I should have taken a pic of the plugs but they look normal. none are wet or super clean. And im not able to see down into the combustion chamber to see if the pistons are clean. (stupid gt40 heads and those ridiculous spark plug angles.)

I suppose it wont hurt just to pull the head and have some peace of mind. I think I already mentioned that the driver side was super loud. I found that one of the exhaust bolts was missing so that could have caused it. I've never pulled a head on my own before. I've assembled a motor under supervision but this is new territory for me. I'm a bit apprehensive but it doesnt look too hard right? I just unbolt the rockers, lift out the pushrods, pull up on the lifters (i've been told to soak them in something?) then undo those nuts (these are arp studs) and pull the heads right?

 

[squeak93]

I too would highly recommend pulling the heads and inspecting.