today my car overheated and i need help figurin out what went wrong, heres what happened before:

i put my camaro in storage for the summer while i wen away and worked. it was rarely driven (bout 4 times all summer) i saved some money and had the tranny replaced about 3 weeks ago. yesterday i finally fixed the exhaust leak coming from the passenger side header and replaced the plugs, a few hoses and changed the oil while i was under there.

anyways, today was its first real drive since june. i let it warm up for a few minutes then off i went. i was shifting manually(700r4) to listen to exhaust notes. i went about 15-20 miles, near the end of the trip the i smelt coolant and saw some white smoke. pulled over and noticed that coolant was spraying from the over flow reservior. i was able to limp on back home but it overheated twice more before i got home. i didnt hear the fan turn on the whole time i was driving it, but im gonna check to see if it turns on when i go back outside to check on it. (its cooling down right now)

can anyone shed some light on whats goin on here. the car has never overheated in the 5 yrs ive owned it.

thanks,

daniel

 

lots of possibilities including: a blown headgasket, a sticky thermostat, inoperative radiator fan, etc.

 

Definately check the fan, that will be the problem if it's not coming on.

I doubt a blown head gasket, you were gettin the white smoke from the coolant coming out the bottle, that's all.

 

If that happens again, turn your ac on to overide the fan, than drive on for help. Could just be a bad fan relay like mine....

 

c

 

you saw white smoke from under the hood, not coming out the tailpipe right?

Well coolant spraying out of the reservoir bottle either means you got way too much coolant in there, or there's air in the system.

I doubt you'd be overheating if you had too much coolant. So that and the fact you've been storing it for a while makes me think you got air in the system.

Take the cap off the radiator and let the engine idle. Just watch the flow into the rad. Add coolant if necessary. You're definatly going to make a mess doing this....but its the only way to get around to getting air out of the system.

 

i would defintly check the fan rely, that was the problem with mine when it was over heating.