Ok so lately, Eversince the lower rad. hose popped off while driving, my car has been heating up.

i know for a fact that there is some rust and i still ahve to go get my rad flushed,

but it was no problem before until i was driving to the store, i turned on the cool fan ( hasnt been turned on for years since i just fixed up the car) and the lower radiator hose popped off,

now, it goes to about 220 (the line before the red lines) then goes back up.

im sure this is doing some damage somewhere within the car, and now it seems like my car is using more rad fluid then before, what can this be?

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1991 camaro rs V6 3.1

 

If your adding antifreeze and there's no visible leaks, it going in your oil or, you're burning it (head gasket).

Head gasket can cause overheating.

 

well, i also had a rear main seal leak but its ok now, when it did leak though, it was just oil and had no hint of rad.

 

Sounds like a blown head gasket. Thats why it blew off the hose, combustion pressure in the cooling system. The water you are losing is going out the tailpipe.

 

ok, im sure its not too hard to pull up the engine to reach the heads right? because the engine is pretty easy to work with. what do i take off to get to head gasket? just the whole air intake right?

 

Intake and exhaust manifolds

 

k, doesnt sound too bad, i will get to it when i graduate (may 23) until then it will have to do,

 

Do a compression check first to verify, before jumping to the usual blown head gasket conclusion and pulling your engine apart. Assume you used a new clamp when u put the probably ratty, misshapen lower hose back on?

 

how do i do that test?

 

Go to your fav local auto parts store, and buy a screw-in compression gauge, prolly $20-30. Pull all plugs out, and disconnect ignition. Prop the throttle wide open. Screw the tester into a plug hole. Crank 4-5 revolutions till you get a steady reading. Write it down, then do the same for the all the other cylinders.

Ideally, all readings should be within about 10% of each others. If a head gasket is blown, one or more will be drastically lower than the others. Also check for the milky oil in the coolant, would be fairly evident.

Just better to do a bit of basic diagnosis first, before you go thru the expense and effort of a partial tear-down.

 

Troubleshoot before you condem the headgaskets as a problem!!

Check the comp ratio if your all at thinking its the headgasket. Personally my 3.1L tested out at 145-155psi when I tested mine a few weeks back. Thats within 10% of all of them and is a normal good number. So look for something like that on the 3.1L

Another thing to do is start the car up when its cold and take the rad, cap off. Wait for the coolent to get warm, it will start to overflow out of the radiator. Look for bubbles streaming up through the coolent.(of you see a stream of bubbles it is not a good thing!)

Another thing to do is smell the antifreeze, if you have doubt smell a fresh bottle of antifreeze then whats in your car, if it smells like gas/oil then you have a problem.

Also check for any steam coming from the base of your heads when your engine is really hot.

Are you positive the fan works and that the thremostat is opening when it gets so hot?

How much coolent are you putting back in the car when you notice its low?? Does it drain your overflow tank dry? Or does it fill the thing up? Or do nothing?

Plan a good 8hrs to change the head gaskets, there alot of crap to take off. Believe me I did it 2 times on my car, so make sure you do it the right way the first time. The second time it took my about 4 hrs to change them out but Im getting good at working on the 3.1L and my motor is bare comparted to a stock 3.1L

I hope thats not your problem though..

 

yea, well lately it hasnt been doing it, it only does it at times, but when it does it cools down within the minute of it reaching the temp. im sure if it was a head gasket it would stay hot? or am i wrong?

 

k, well there is no heat coming from heads, at all. i will do the rad cap off thing when its done rainging so i can check it out as well as smell it.

i need to get a new bottle of fluid because its low but not tottally drained.

 

How much coolent are you loosing?? Like say you top it off, drive it for a few days, how much is missing?? Alot?

 

no it wasnt losing barely any at first, was normal, only reason i think it chugged it was to make up for what i lost, it was quite a few. wish i wouldve noticed earlier.

oh BTW

how do i take off the main dash frame to get behind my cluster to change the bulbs? i cant seem to take off the **** to dim or lighten my dash cluster?

 

Ahh for the coolent thing, try this, start the car when its cold and leave the cap off, put coolent into it till it wont take anymore, then when it starts to flow out(it will do that on its own as it gets hot) put the cap back on the rad. Fill your overflow tank to where its suppose to be and keep a close eye on it.

About the cluster. Ok let me remember as I took mine off a few times, even put those white overlays on the guages.

How about this, you want a video of it because its easier to show you what bolts to take off then how to on a message

 

Im at work right now so if you want ill take a video tommrow morning, let me know! Its easy once you do it once or twice.
White guage overlay and Blue Leds are in mine

 

awesome. sounds good.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VybJ2...ature=youtu.be

Here ya go man, I tried my best to just explain it but youll know what to do once you start taking screws off.

 

k man, so i have the plastics off, i just cant seem to take off that damn ****, and i cant find the button you were talking about.

 

Take a flaslight and look in the bottom slot under the ****, it will be a small metal silver button. Push up on it, twards the dash, then pull back on the ****. I had to use a socket extention to actually puch the button. That is the hardest part of doing that job

 

yea i could tell bro, i keep pushing it but with no success, hmm i wonder what will work..

 

You have to push the **** all the way in, then push that button in as straght as possible, then slowly pull the **** out.

 

may i ask where did you get the white skin? i would like one and how to get blue neon on the pointers? well i did not know you needed the special ASM to replace so tommoro to con paulos and see whatsup.

 

Whats a special ASM?

 

the whole bulb thing, the bulb and the holder are connected in my cluster so i pulled one and it dissconected the whole thing, so i need to go to dealer and get the whole bulb with the holder to put in.

 

What, you just turn the holder that the bulb is in, it will come out then yank out the old light and in with the new. I didnt need to do anything that your talking about when I got my new lights in.

 

i did do that but it completely gutted the inside of it and yanked the whole wires so now nothing can go in and make light, but its not too bad. how did you get blue in ur lights man?

 

There just blue leds, and inside the cluster I actually wired extra lights in there so that the only part that was blue was the arrows/.

 

oh i see, looks very nice. well im going to have to wait till tommorow to go to the dealer and pick some of these up, BTW, is there anything i should check while i got my whole cluster off?

 

umm not really, just replace every single light so that you dont have to take it off again.

 

k. man i wish i could switch the RPMS to where the speedometer is lol, its funny at times though,. like i was on the freeway and my friend checked to see how fast i was going and he was like man i gotta admit your car is REALLY fast for going 20, i just started cracking up and told him those are the RPMS haha.

 

hi all i have an 86 iroc 305 lg4 all stock electric single cooling fan and having overheating problems with it i just replaced the intake manifold because a bolt broke off in the old one and couldn't get it out it was stuck in there so bad to the point where it called for the replacing of the manifold which i did and also replaced the fan switch on the drivers side cylinder head with a hypertech one and now the car overheats fan is on all the time.from cold start the gauge reads below 100 then after 1 mile of driving the temp. guage shoots straight from cold to beyond the mechanical limits of the gauge shot a temp. gun at it to double check and the gun reads 240 degrees at the drivers side cylinder head i'm at a loss here don't know what else to do btw new water pump and fan and radiator sorry for the long post any help would be greatly appreciated

 

is your cooling fluid lasting or does it get chugged fast?

 

no coolant is being used or burned or leaked out