lovemyseven

iTrader: (2)

I just rebuilt my engine and it has been running for about a week
I have only run it for short periods of time to break it in.
When I park it and pop the hood to let it cool, there is a lot of gurgling noise coming from my radiator fill neck. The coolant overflow tank also starts to leak fluid. Yesterday, I opened the overflow tank to allow some heat out, and steam came out for a few minutes. Why is my coolant so hot? It's freaking me out, because I ran it hot before and it led to an engine rebuild.
Please give me whatever info you've got.

7

dude,

first of all, I am not familiar with the parts name, so can't tell your directly what to check. hope I could explain.

check all the hoses from your radiator to engine, especially the big one you will see close to the fans to see any leaks. what you could do, take them off, and check both inner hose and outer hose to see any leaks

visually check the one with the cap where goes to the reserver. nosie cam out from there usually because the plastic is broken, so hot coolant came out from there, and you will hear noise.

better check your reserver too, and see any hole underneath or to see if the small little hose connecting to your reserver is missing or what. It happened to me.

Another you might think of is how you park your car? up the hill with the front bumper facing down? If there is the case, watch out for your coolant, coz the reserver got a hole on top, and it will let go the excess coolant from that hole. if you keep parking your car like that for few weeks, your coolant light will definitely turned on, and you have no idea where the problem was, and turn out that was the little damn hole. it happened to me too. coz the hill is like 45 degrees

hope this help

dis1

First of all make sure you have enough coolant in your car. It sounds like you might not. When the car is cold open the filler neck and make sure it is toped off. If it isn't do so. Check this several times. If you fill it but every time you check it is low you are losing coolant. This would be bad. If it is full a common issue is a failed AST cap. Mine went and cause the problem you described. $3 to fix that problem. Next, do you have a water temp gauge? If not shame on you. You could be over heating and not even know it. If you do what temps are you seeing? Anyway it sounds like you might have something messed up so my advice is don't drive the car until you figure this out lest you risk another engine.

spooledUP7

I agree that you need to check and make sure that you are not low on coolant. It sounds to me that you have air trapped in your cooling system. You may want to run your heater while you drive to help circulate the trapped air, and to help bring the coolant temps down. My car used to make that same sound as well as lost coolant. I changed both the filler neck cap and the AST cap and the coolant lose was resolved. I checked the coolant daily, and I think that by constantly opening and adding coolant I successfully burped the cooling system.

I changed my coolant a short while back and did the same thing of checking it daily and filling it until the system was full. I made the mistake of filling the overflow with too much fluid and ultimatly left little room for additional coolant for normal expansion. It spilled several times before it normalized. I no longer have coolant level problems, and the garggling is gone.

I would also like to note that I frequently run with the heater on when it's hot out, and when I run the car hard. I also pop the hood the last 1/4 mile before I am home (35mph max) to help further cool the engine. This leaves the engine cool to the touch. I figure it is the best turbo timer out there, and it's free (as long as you don't get pulled over for an open hood).

Tad

Hmmm,
maybe this is what happened to the engine of my
last FD,

THe guy i bought it off didnt tell me it was salvaged...
and just now guessing that it was probly just freshly put together
before I bought it, it looked like it had a new engine in it.

I had no idea how new, so drove it normally, and street raced occasionally, the coolant would bubble, and i had to check
the levels constantly make sure it wasnt going low.

Then I raced some guy.. and BLAMMO the engine died,
i looked in the coolant the next morning... it was all gone!

sux to get ripped off, maybe the engine woulda lived
if the guy had told me it was new(so i woulda known to break
it in).

Course this probly doesnt help your situation, just some
interesting stuf that happend, heh.

Alpine

Use 50/50 coolant to water ratio.

Randy

clearthinker

I thought after sprint driving that some gurgling was expected....I'm I wrong??

potatobbq

Same here, mine gurgles a bit. I always thought it was normal... I just replaced the stock radiator w/ a Koyo race radiator and replaced the stock ast w/ an aluminum Pettit ast and it doesn't seem like it gets that hot, but it STILL gurgles. My stock temp gauge never goes past about 40% to the top and I'm not leaking coolant anywhere that I can see... Is it not supposed to gurgle at all?

Alpine

wasssu potatobbq, this is Randy with the red 93, how is your car doing at rp?

potatobbq

haha wassup randy... hopefully my car is doing good. I have to call jeff this week to see what's up. How your car running after takin it to rp? did u get the rb inlet installed last friday too or just the fluids changed?

Alpine

nah just fluid, going to get the rb duct installed next week, rp is all booked up for this week

Nathan Kwok

Some people say that gurgling is normal and some people don't, so I'm not sure what the right answer is. I've personally only heard anything that can resemble "gurgling" once, when I opened my hood right away after getting out. It sounded more like water moving through the hoses than gurgling, but either way I think this is the sound of water flowing through the AST as the pressure changes. If you are having problems with the coolant boiling over, try replacing your AST and radiator caps. If they aren't holding pressure, the coolant will boil (especially after shutdown when the car heat soaks) at a much lower temperature, so you could have boilover without actually overheating (although this will still kill your engine, so fix it right away). Also understand that a higher water/coolant ratio will lower the boiling point even though it transfers heat more effectively. Remember regular water boils at 212, which is a normal temp for a warmed up engine, while pressurized coolant shouldn't boil until 260+.

luneytune

After my engine rebuild same thing. You have to burb the cooling system. It took about 5 top ups to clear all the air from the system. Gurgling is normal. But DO NOT OPEN THE RAD CAP WHEN HOT!!!! The fluid will quickly boil out and possibley injure you. Also if too much boils out you will get localized heating in the core - not good. Run with the heater on partially and each morning open and top up the filler. It doesn't take long. IMHO