ok, so i have a 1986 T/A...305 tpi...
so anyway i have dropped so much money into this car and i love it so much that it is just about not worth selling at this point. it has almost 68,000 original miles on it. now, it had seemed to be that there was an electrical problem when the battery kept going dead even after the alternator had been just replaced. so the mechanic finds a crack in the trunk locking mechanism case(electrical trunk). so he fixes that and the problem seems to be fixed...so i am on my way home from the mechanic's shop (mind you his shop is an hour and a half away from my house) so i'm cruisin down the parkway, and first the engine starts running hot, then eventually so hot that its tipping the scale on the thermometer guage, i basically estimated it was so far past the hottest point it looked like it was running at close to 300 degrees. i was freaking out. i have plenty of coolant etc, no smoke or anything and i made it home no problem but that was the first thing. and so as always i go to use the car later that night, and its dead as usual no power no dome light NOTHING. it keeps doing this no matter how many times i get it back from the mechanic. and i know its the not the mechanic trying to screw me over because he is a close family friend and also, it works perfectly everytime at the shop when he's finished with it.(hence why i drive and hour and a half to his shop)....so anyway like usual, if i let the car sit for a day or two it starts right up, wtf? but i can't even take it anywhere because i don't know when the hell its gonna crap out on me. i should prbably also mention that when it does start back up the engine kinda hesitates and won't allow me to rev it up until either after a few tries or the car has been driving around for a little while. does anyone have any clue wtf is going on here? i'd appreciate any input, thanks.

 

1. Welcome to the forums.

2. It sounds like you have two separate problems - overheating and electrical. Maybe a post here for the overheating and a post in the electrical forum might have been an idea.

3. We know you have a 1986 305 TPI that you have put a lot of money into. Was that money just for stock repairs, or have you modified this car in any way?

Looking at your post, I would tell you the basics without knowing what you have done already.

Did you replace the battery? Maybe it is dead. My battery did the same thing when it died. I put in a new one and now that car runs great.

My next guess would be if you had any custom wiring - alarm? Stereo?

My next question would be, has the car always had this electrical problem, or did it start after you changed something? You say you replaced the alternator, replacements are sometimes bad. The battery would have taken a lot of stress running the car while the alternator was going out.

Overheating when driving a T/A - the simplest cause of this without knowing anything else would be that you are missing the air deflector under the car that channels cold air up into the radiator. These get knocked off when you hit something on the freeway, and people fail to replace them.

Did you check the oil? Low oil would cause the motor to overheat. Is the oil burnt looking, or clean?

My question would be, why did you keep driving the car with it overheating? It's one thing to have fix electrical and cooling problems - driving the car until it blows up from overheating will cost lots of money. I blew a Mazda 626 that way - radiator empty and it overheated until it seized. I know you said it had plenty of coolant, but overheating is overheating - never a good thing.

 

1. Thanks

2. Sorry I'm brand new to these message boards as you obviously noticed, please don't be so condescending.

3. Unfortunately almost all of the money I have put into this car have been stock repairs. The only things that weren't were brand new tires and a hooker cat back exhaust.

OK, now...
Everytime I have had to have it towed to my mechanic(s) there was a problem they thought they had figured out and almost everytime due to that problem killing my battery, they've replaced it. I think I'm on my 4th battery since october.

And Yes, I did have an alarm system in it that the mechanics told me kept shorting out and causing a problem, therefore I had it completely removed.

Hmm, no the car has not always had this problem. I'd say it started after I had the transmission replaced.....although I don't think that has much relevance to the real problem here. Also, this has been a persistent problem since even before the alternator was replaced.

YES, i have plenty of oil, it's clean, it's not burnt, and there are no leaks.

Why you ask, that I kept driving it? well, I had no cell phone at the time, and if you didn't see this in the first post, I was about an hour and a half away from my house, i DON'T have AAA, and I have no one to come and get me out of a jam like that, so unfortunately, considering the circumstances and that the car was NOT smoking or making and weird sounds and appeared to be running perfectly aside from my thermometer telling me it's gonna overheat...I had to risk it to get my *** home.

 

2. Wasn't trying to be condescending, just making a suggestion.

Is it possible a wire got crunched when the tranny was put back in?

Make sure that if any wires were cut into for the alarm were patched up after removing the alarm.

Check to make sure your air dam is still installed under your car if it is still overheating. Also, because you are having electrical problems, maybe your car wasn't really overheating, and it was just the gauge going crazy.

Also, the issue with it driving funny when you first start it up - I read a post that says if you unhook your battery the computer has to re "learn" your car all over again. I don't know if it's true, but that's what I read.

I don't know what else to say, except good luck. These newer cars are a pain in the *** when something goes wrong. Maybe someone else can post something more helpful, but if you have anything else to say about your car, whats been done to it or how it runs, let us know.