Pressure in my water cooling system?
 

Hey guys, I'm beginning to fear a serious problem... First, here is what is NOT happening... I am NOT getting a lot of smoke (none visable from the rear view mirror, except for a poof on startup, and sometimes just a tiny bit under hard acceleration) and I am NOT overheating (the gauge does read a bit higher than I would like, the needle touches the left side of the little wave picture when driving, and will go straight through the picture when idleing for a while in traffic.

here is what IS happening... I constantly need to refill my coolant. I cannot see any leaks anywhere, hopefully I can find one sooner rather than later. I will be going home in about two weeks and will be able to do a better inspection. However, after driving for about 3 minutes, the "add coolant" light goes off. I try to stay on top of things though, so I like to add coolant after seeing the light, even if it's just for a second or two. Latley, when I go to re-fill it, there is a LOT of pressure build-up, like, I unscrew the radiator cap, and if I even release my grip a little bit, coolant comes bursting out, allong with a lot of "gurgleing" noises from what sounds to be the overflow tank.

I have alywas had some sort of cooling issue, including very rusty water getting spit out of the overflow tank after driving on the highway (and creating quite a mess in the front passenger side of my engine bay). There is a tiny hole in the top of the overflow tank, and that's where it gets squirted out.

My question to you guys is this: what in the world is going on?! I am most likley going to get a new radiator in the next few days/weeks along with a black magic fan, but is there any other possible problems I should look out for? Do I possibly have a seal going bad or something? Why would there be so much pressure in the system?

thanks
~Andrew

yes.

nm

Get ready for a rebuild...

This may sound retarded but have you recently replaced the thermostat? A good rule with these cars is if it EVER goes over half on the temp guage quit driving it immediatly and figure it out or it will cost you. Mine has never even gotten to half since i replaced the thermostat but after looking at your sig/ mod list im sure you already thought of that. If not i hope i helped

Yeah, time for a rebuild. I was running on a spare motor last week that had this problem, the minute it smoked white I got it out and put it in the 'to do' pile. :(