my problems continue

[RiceeatingSHO]

Ok, a while back my top radiator hose popped off the radiator. I pulled over and got it back on. i started home and just before i got there it started getting close to the red. I kept going because I was almost home. it got into the red but only for about 30 or so seconds and I pulled into my driveway. I filled the radiator up with water and left her alone. In a couple weeks i went to drive her and My heat didn't work, well, it worked under hard acceleration and my temp guage stayed up near red but never touching. Then it would drop way down and come back up. The next day I went for a short drive, and same thing, under heavy acceleration she would cool right down and then heat right back up. So I got home and popped the hood, everything looked normal. I walked around the car and there is a steady flow of coolant from the firewall side of the engine, I don't know where it's coming from. Any Ideas as to what is causing this? Are they related at all? i really want to get her fixed. Thanks

 

[K-Dawg]

Busted heater hose, perhaps?

 

[1993MTXSHO]

well if your coolant is low, from the leak, it gets hot under lower rpm because the pump isnt spinning fast enough to keep the limited amount of coolant in the system cooling properly. Im guessing though.

Its kinda a guess, I did this with my mustang when i forgot to fill it bak with coolant it was running about half full, and id get to about 240 and id hit the gas and id come down to 220 or so. I only drove about 1/2 miles before i realizeed i forgot to fill it, so that might be why you car is doing that.

 

[jthod]

X2 on low coolant. My Monte did the same thing when it was low on coolant. It would get real hot, I'd mash the gas pedal, and it'd cool off. I filled it up, and it was fine and it quit surging.

 

[itwonder]

Borrow a radiator pressure tester from Autozone, Advance Auto, etc; no charge, just a deposit required. use that to pressurize the system, and you can then track down the leak without the motor running. On the firewall side, a likely suspect is one of the two heater hoses. These begin at the firewall, transition to metal pipe, transition back to rubber hose, and attach to the engine more or less underneath the throttle body. The transitions from rubber hose to metal pipe use crimp connections that often fail with age. You can cut away the crimp metal and use a regular worm clamp. Chase leaks down until the system will hold 15 lbs of pressure for two minutes.

 

[RiceeatingSHO]

Ok, I will definately work on this. I am having some sort of sensor issue on the colorado too right now.

 

[sho_ted]

The hose blew off for a reason, too much presure in the system. maybe a head gasket issue?

 

[jayro]

It may not be another issue that causes the hose to blow off, it could just be age. I had the hose at the firewall fail at about 150K, I replaced it and havn't had any problems since. Just my 2 cents.

Jeremy

 

[frosho]

Doubt it's a headgasket issue. That's a pretty rare occurance.

 

[rubydist]

My experience is that once they get hot, the thermostat is toast, so I'd suggest changing that too.

 

[RiceeatingSHO]

the hose is practically brand new. so is the T-stat, but it seemed to work fine since coolant was flowing enough to leak.

 

[925spdsho]

I would make sure also that you don't have any air in the cooling system, i had a hose blow off my cutlass and afterwards i got no heat inside, and the engine was running near the red. So i had to bleed the air out of the cooling system to get it back to normal