so i turn on the car today. the car turns over fine, and idles rough for acouple seconds and then it idled fine. i waited for it to warm up before i opened the hood, since the car has been shutting off by itself lately when it idles. so 10 minutes pass by and the car almost turns off but it corrects itself, this happens once or twice more in the next 5 minutes. then i see the temperature gauge creeps up to the red. then it settles down alittle bit, then the car gets one of its little attacks and turns off. i turn the key and crank the car again, starts up right away, and dont have any problems for 5 more minutes, then it shuts off again. then it dies again. so i crank it again. starts right up, now i notice that the temp. is climbing up into the red again, so i check if the fans are on, and they are . so i just wait for it to cool down. it stays around the red zone and then it suddenly dies. this time when i try to crank it over i just get one attempt to crank and then nothing. as if the battery was dead.

now i know the battery wasnt in its best shape since its been sitting in the car for a while, but i did charge it up acouple days before. so now my question is

my idle was acting funny, and i thought it was either that or a vacuum leak that was causing my funny idle. and now im wondering if my car is getting too hot and if theres any way this could affect my car and why it doesnt wanna turn on. also is it possible that it could be some sort of ignition component causing the bad idle and the shutting off and not turning back on?

things changed: spark plug wires, rotor, distributor cap, fuel pump

 

heat kills batteries, id check there, if you try to put a charge into a lead acid battery that isnt a deep cycle, youll have no luck. LA batteries arent designed to be drained then charged, they need to be kept at a constant charge while in the car (no driving without an alternator/trying to charge a dying battery with your alternator) or on a trickle charge outside of the car.

When you tried to restart it the last time, did the starter even click? Is your alternator putting out the proper voltage? I dunno if our cars are affecting by this as much but i know that OBD2 cars have a DRL mode (driver relearn mode) where you have to run it through one drive cycle (cant remember gms version of a "complete" cycle) but any time the voltage drops below a certain threshold, DRL is turned on and its like a limp mode til the ECM can relearn whats going on. id check your battery then look more into the DRL, i had my DD drop into that when my battery went to crap and i thought my whole motor was gonna break, kept dying, sputtering, choking, etc

 

I think that the speed density cars do go though a relearning process when the battery is disconnected and they will idle up and down a bit until they relearn. But my question is why do you keep the car running if your temp gauge is creeping into the red? That is a potential for a disaster. Who knows why your car is overheating. Could be a stuck thermostat, lean running condition, bad water pump, cracked head or a blown head gasket. It your car starts overheating shut it off before anymore damage is done.

 

now whats to say the gauge is accurate? i had my original clusters temp gauge peg before it even hit 210* but going on the assumption that it is correct then Saculia is right, shut it off and see why its behaving that way, have you attempted to start the car since this happened? its been a day or two

 

i have not, seeing as how i havent had a day off from work to do so. im planning on taking it around the block for a 5 minute drive, i do know that when u disconnect the battery for a while, it has to re learn all of its old habits which might cause drive ablility problems. so in order to eliminate that ill try that. im also going to spray around some carb cleaner to see if i have any vaccuum leaks.

about the temperature i can only hope its wrong, i have a new radiator, and the fluid is at the correct level. if the gauge is wrong would a simple coolant temperature sensor replacement fix it? or is it the temperature sending unit that i have to replace?

 

If it's reading in the red the engine should physically exhibit overheating symptoms if not then the gauge is incorrect.
on a dual fan system the secondary fan will come on at 238°F.

 

exactly. youd know if it was overheating, i just used a scan tool to see what the ECM was reading.

As far as the DRL goes, does anyone know the correct drive cycle for our cars? We went over this in class like a month ago and it was some ridiculous dragged out thing like drive at 45mph for 4 mins, decelerate to 30 for 4 minutes, then run at 70 for some amount of time, thats not an accurate one but i remember it was a long process

 

yeah in class i learned it was something like coasting at atleast 30mph then accelerating, then coasting, its some long routine.

also my car is a single fan, and what i do is turn on the heater, to turn it on sooner, and cuz its freakin cold outside. the car doesnt appear to be overheating, i dont see any steam or anything, the only problem that i do get is that it turns off and wont turn back on.

 

well if you have acess to a scan tool like a genisys or even a TechI id try there, take a look at the datastream and see whats out of place, obviously your fans working so its not overheating, youd boil the coolant as you know so im thinking that hasnt got much to do with it

 

Verify that you a circulating coolant through the engine. Your fan could be coming on as a result of the fan switch on the engine head. It is set to turn the fan on at 235*F. By the time you start boiling the coolant and seeing steam it may already be too late. You don't have to overheat the engine in order to find out that it is running too hot.

 

well i havent seen the coolant boiling, and it seems to be running fine when it shuts off. the problem is that it just wont turn back on. ill post a video of the problem tommorow.