heres my story. I need your help.

bought a used camaro. I knew it had cooling problems. sometimes the car temp would raise but i would fiddle with the heat and a/c and it would go away. one day, im not paying attention to my gauges, the temp got to high and blew a hole in the top of the radiator. (pictured) anyways, now I have a car without a radiator and some sort of cooling problem. I'm no expert, but what I'm starting on doing to fix this problem is replacing the radiator and the thermostat. also, the engine fan motor has been replaced.

what else can i do to make sure my car stays nice and cool?

 

well change the radiator, thermostat as planned. fill with coolant and see how it does. make sure you have the air dam on the bottom of the car. that is critical to cooling on the third gens. if the fan comes on. and those other two parts are new. the only other culprit is the water pump. good way to check that is to see if the coolant level goes down radiator cap off when you rev up the engine. be careful playing with hot cooling systems. the fans may be coming on late also which could cause a getting hot condition. and of course good luck!

 

As UnderCover mentions, make sure the air dam is in place, but also be certain the baffle is there as well.

JamesC

 

If the only time your fan comes on is when you turn on the AC, then your fan is good, the relay is good, but the fan switch is not, assuming you have the V8 TBI engine. Let it sit idling in the driveway or somewhere like that and let it warm up idling and see when the fan comes on, but watch the temp gauge and turn on the fan before it hits the red zone

 

I plan on doing that. Also, another question. How unsafe on a scale of 1-10 is it to drive this car with a hole that size in the radiator? and when i say drive i mean no more then a mile or two to work every day. I haven't, ive been walking but im real eager to drive her considering i just got it. obviously, when the car heats up it needs to cool off but do you think a mile or two could hurt it if i dont let it over heat?