Quick question. Cooling problem asap :(

[latham83]

alright...my gauge is acting funny..it jumps around alot...ionce it shot to 250 really quck and then slowly climbed down...i attempting to burp the system. The car warmed up from cold to about 150 and the fluid in the rad. rose up out of the top and poor on the ground. then sucked down alot. and then did the same thing again..what the hell is that?! and then when it warmed up past 180 to like 210 it didnit look like the thermo even opened yet because the rows were not flowing!
so i put the cap on. drove it and stayed at a steady 195...when it siits it slowly climbs to like 210 but once u start moving it drops again.
i toook the tstat out and tried it in boiling water and it opened up. so i dont know what is going on.
question. the flow of the antifreeze through the block...that BLACK pipe that runs along the lower manifold, it goes to the heater core. And there is a hose connected to that , to the water pump. is the flow suppose to come OUT of that black pipe into the water pump??? i thought the pump pushed it into there?
do i have a backwards waterpump cause my belts on right?

 

[hllon4whls]

Did you just replace the water pump? Any 302/351 pump will physically fit, but you need a reverse rotation pump if you run a stock serpentine belt.

In order to test the stat, you have to know the temp of the water. IE a 180 stat should open at 180'. Water boils at 212. You have no idea where that stat opened. It may have opened at 205 degrees or higher.
The water may appera may appear to flow either way because of higher pressure in the block (through the heater core) if you open both of those lines.

 

[HISSIN50]

im with Hllon. for the price of a stat, get a new one and reburp the system thoroughly. i personally like the Mr. Gasket stats. much better piece than parts store generics.
good luck.

 

[Scorpion91GT]

Latham83, it took nearly two weeks to get my cooling problem fixed, would have taken a day if I just did everything at once. I just got to driving my car a couple of days ago, I replaced the ENTIRE cooling system, I was having similar problems, but after waiting for parts and installing a sweet aluminum radiator, new water pump ( Summit High Flow ), and Flexalite Black magic electric fan, my car runs cold!! No matter what, I was stuck in traffic for nearly an hour, hot as hell outside, and it still ran ice cold!! The only think I'm noticing is that I may need a stronger alternator, other than that, I love it, I don't worry about overheating anymore.

As your car gets older it could be alot of things, believe me my car was driving me nuts with the cooling issue, but my system was entirely stock, so it could be a combination of everything (from what I was told), my car ran funny, sometimes it cooled nice, then I would see the needle climb way up, where I had to shut my engine off. Old radiator probably didn't flow well, water pump probably didn't pump efficiently, clutch on the fan was probably on it's way out, t-stat was new, so I knew and I knew it wasn't that. Just giving you something to think about. You'll probably pay about 600 bucks for aluminum radiator, fan, and pump if you haven't replaced that already, but I'm sure after you're done, you'll be happy you did, I am.

Good luck!