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Over heated last night!

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Old 01-01-07, 11:45 PM
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Over heated last night!

Ok last night my car over heated some how..... All I know is that it was only not a quarter of the way up the temp meter (normal temp for mine) then not even a minute later, it jumped half way of the meter! What is this, thermastat, low coolant(which is a little low)......? Or is there something wrong, cuz I heard a lot of about fc's and the heating problem, and then when they come out with the fd's that they totally fixed the problem, with a modifaction.... so info would be appreciated thank you...
Old 01-02-07, 12:26 AM
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i blew one of my heater hoses early this week, check all your hoses, theres 5 total 2 radiator and 3 heater
Old 01-02-07, 12:33 AM
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a thermostat controls the flow of water through your system... when your car is cold, it keeps the water in your engine block stationary until it is hot.. then it allows it to circulate.... In my head, I can't think of how a thermostat failure could cause an overheat condition on your guage. If it stuck shut, it would show as cold on your guage... if it was stuck open, there would be no cooling problem... it would just take longer for your car to warm up in the morning.

You probably had low coolant to begin with. Your temp guage should be around half-way.... three quarters up is constantly running hot...

Hows your car running? You don't sound that concerned about this problem, when infact, its a pretty serious problem.. How long did you drive it in the overheated condition?
Old 01-02-07, 12:36 AM
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The only way is to start narrowing it down to the source. Start by looking at your whole cooling sys and see if there is a leaks on the outside. If not, maybe your thermostat not fuctioning, check it by tossing it in boiling water. If that checksout, then it could be corrosion in your radiator blocking the flow of coolant.
Old 01-02-07, 01:12 AM
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If you think they fixed the overheating problem in the FD, maybe you should read some more about your own car. Oyea...SEARCH! It's a great feature we have here!
Old 01-02-07, 01:23 AM
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Originally Posted by Qhasan31
Ok last night my car over heated some how..... All I know is that it was only not a quarter of the way up the temp meter (normal temp for mine) then not even a minute later, it jumped half way of the meter! What is this, thermastat, low coolant(which is a little low)......? Or is there something wrong, cuz I heard a lot of about fc's and the heating problem, and then when they come out with the fd's that they totally fixed the problem, with a modifaction.... so info would be appreciated thank you...
Oh.. forgot to add..

Stay in school.
Old 01-02-07, 01:37 AM
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[QUOTE=micaheli]a thermostat controls the flow of water through your system... when your car is cold, it keeps the water in your engine block stationary until it is hot.. then it allows it to circulate.... In my head, I can't think of how a thermostat failure could cause an overheat condition on your guage. If it stuck shut, it would show as cold on your guage...

QUOTE]


actualy a stuck( closed) thermostat will show on the guage, the temperature sender is on the block, so the hot water traped in the block will make the gauge skyrocket
Old 01-02-07, 01:40 AM
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I thought th sender is on the top of the radiator.... Or is that a level meter... I could be getting the two confused.
Old 01-02-07, 06:43 AM
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Originally Posted by micaheli
I thought th sender is on the top of the radiator.... Or is that a level meter... I could be getting the two confused.
You're getting them confused.
Attached Thumbnails Over heated last night!-14508492122.jpg  
Old 01-02-07, 07:20 AM
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definately check yer heater hoses, especially the one under yer oil filter. it tends to get a lot of oil on it over time and can bust.


sorry, i know i sound like a noob, but can i wire in an aftermarket temp gauge to the stock sender? thanks
Old 01-02-07, 01:20 PM
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Originally Posted by micaheli
Oh.. forgot to add..

Stay in school.

Aye buddy, I am in school and yeah I spelled modification, I was in a rush to type it cuz I had to leave the computer so everything wasn't fully type correctly, you ******' *****, and I'm very concerced about my vehicle, because its my only car, so if you are goin' to be an ******* get off my thread, because I don't got time for people who live in oregon that want to be rude, so don't come at me like that...

Ok, check the line under the oil filter pressure sender, where the heater hose is. I'm just going to check all the cooling system hoses. Any other suggestions on what I should do?

by the way that diagram actually helped me to see where exactly you guys are telling me to look at.
Old 01-02-07, 01:23 PM
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After I parked it, it was smoking a little bit. I was only driving it for about 10 minutes, like I said, my car runs very cool, it doesn't go up a quarter of the gauge.
Old 01-02-07, 01:25 PM
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And I spelled thermostat wrong.........
Old 01-02-07, 03:12 PM
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Its probably a stuck T-stat. And yes micaheli your a ***** for acting like that too!
Old 01-02-07, 03:46 PM
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Originally Posted by 91verty
Its probably a stuck T-stat. And yes micaheli your a ***** for acting like that too!
Hehe. Yep! But it had nothing to do with spelling...

Sorry man.. I sincerely apologize.
Old 01-02-07, 05:04 PM
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Ok, so now I know that my thermostat is open, not sure if it closes or not...... but the top radiator hose is hot when running...... ok

Now when I was running the car to see what the temp meter would get to it sat at the normal running condition...... but when I turned the car off, I say about 10-15 seconds later it started to smoke..... thet smoke was coming from the pasenger side of the engine.... It was a white smoke....
Old 01-02-07, 05:12 PM
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Originally Posted by Qhasan31
Ok, so now I know that my thermostat is open, not sure if it closes or not...... but the top radiator hose is hot when running...... ok

Now when I was running the car to see what the temp meter would get to it sat at the normal running condition...... but when I turned the car off, I say about 10-15 seconds later it started to smoke..... thet smoke was coming from the pasenger side of the engine.... It was a white smoke....
Well.. having it stick open is a MUCH better problem to have than stuck closed.

Best way to tell is... go for a drive... if you drive and drive and drive and your guage shows cold until one moment when it starts moving and goes to half-way.. then its working.. But, if its slowly comes up the entire time you start driving.. its stuck open.

Does that make sense?
Old 01-02-07, 05:32 PM
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Ok but what about the smoke?
Old 01-02-07, 06:10 PM
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Oh. i didn't see that part... it smoked AFTER you turned it off?! You sure your overflow tube from your radiator is connected to the overflow tank? I forgot to hook it up one time, and it spurted all over my engine after I turned it off.... I'd visually inspect it when you turn it off.. find out where its coming from.
Old 01-02-07, 06:21 PM
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Originally Posted by micaheli
You probably had low coolant to begin with. Your temp guage should be around half-way.... three quarters up is constantly running hot...
actually around 1/4 up is all it should read if it is an S4.
Old 01-02-07, 06:47 PM
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Okay, so I took:
it was only not a quarter of the way up the temp meter
to mean that it was all but a quarter of the way up.... It WAS hard to read in the way you wrote it... so... perhaps "It was 3/4 the way up" would have been an easier way of saying it. :shrug:
Old 01-02-07, 07:58 PM
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If i said that it was 3/4 of the way up that mean it would of been running tooo hot! a quarter of the way up was perfectly fine to me..... but yeah my overflow tank, thats at the front of the engine bay right? if so that part hasn't been connected the whole time i've been having the car, which was for 4 months going on 5.... and it has never smoked...
Old 01-02-07, 08:06 PM
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White smoke is usually steam, check your heater core hoses that go above the exhaust into the firewall.

Did you get a low coolant buzzer?
Old 01-02-07, 08:14 PM
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Nope haven't had that since I did a radiator flush a while back....... aight that has to be it then..... ok, thanks...
Old 01-02-07, 08:19 PM
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I've got a wonderful tip Qhasan... If there's smoke/steam coming from your engine bay, there's a leak! So yeah, you should find it and fix it before you drive your car again.

Also, if your gauge only went half-way up before you shut the car off--you might've just gotten lucky... Anything above half (in an overheating situation) can start getting really, really bad. So yeah, hopefully everything will be OK.

Random tip about the thermostat:

If you're smart like me, you'll have both your stock coolant temp. gauge hooked up normally (reading the block temp.), and then your AFTERMARKET gauge hooked up on the other side of the thermostat (like tapped into the aluminum water-pump housing)... I've had several thermostats fail on me, and the only reason I've been able to save my engine is that I noticed that my stock gauge was going up and my aftermarket gauge had been reading zero. An Rx7 with a stuck thermostat will overheat in 5-10 minutes, so if you're in a hurry it'd be really easy to miss the rapid increase in temperature without having this valuable method of comparison.
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