car overheating

[crazyychriss123]

here's a story.

i was driving to school one day and noticed my water temp. gauge going up, so i got to school and checked the radiator and there was no water in it. when i left to go to school i had water.

my first thought is i have a leak. well i let it sit for about 4 days, made sure i had water in the radiator and also had a cardboard box underneath to see where the water was leaking from. everyday from those 4 days i went out to check the water. what did i find? no leak, my radiator had water. i also had it running for about 10 mins, then checked for a leak, but was unsuccessful.

so today, i drove around town no overheating all day. had water in it still. now i'm driving home from a friends after the car sitting outside for a couple hours, get about 2 miles and noticed the water temp gauge going up again. i pull over and put some water in the radiator. gauge went back down, everything was fine. until after about 20 miles did the gauge start to go back up, but it kept going from normal to hot, normal to hot. until finally i get home. now its sitting outside cooling off.

i'm really not sure what to do about this and i don't really wanna have to go see a professional. anything else i can check for? or anything i can do that i haven't tried before?

asking on here before i go spend any money, cause i know most of the people on this site are professionals and know what their talking about.

sorry for any bad grammar and a long boring story.

[ferenza]

Is it happening in stop and go traffic or just straight driving?
When you open he hood to put water, is there any visible leaks?
Is your fan kicking on when the temp goes up?
(just asking questions cuz you will be asked these later)

A few things could be wrong:
Not enough coolant/antifreeze in the system since you keep filling up with water .Themostat could be half open/closed ,the heagasket could be leaking, your fan is not kicking on when its suppose to, one or the hoses may be blocked.

[crazyychriss123]

when the gauge was going up and down it was straight driving.
yes the fan kicked on
no i did not see any visible leak

my dad said, it could be the hose. since it gets really hot it expands so there could be a puncture in the hose somewhere. when i ran it for 10 mins. i guess it didnt get hot enough just sitting there. something i will check out tomorrow

[wed3k]

if there isnt a leak, id check if it is getting consumed.

[crazyychriss123]

i thought that too, but do you really think it can suck a full tank of water plus whats in the container it draws water from? just in a 20 mile ride.

[NVmyCB7]

You would be surprised on my 94 civic hatch the head gasket was shot and it took a gallon and a half on a 1.1 mile trip. Sputtered like crazy. But on the bright side piston number 2 was clean as hell no carbon(water through a vacume line old school trick to clean up carbon build up). You can fork out 25 bucks for a new t stat and rad cap see if those are at fault. Or you can do a compression test and a pressure test on the cooling system. I would go with the cooling system pressure test. That let's you know if you got a leak anywhere water passes through. Baisicaly puts pressure in the cooling system and if gauge drops then you got coolant escaping

[Xclusive1]

Make sure you check all your hoses. I had a tiny hole the size of a pinhole on one of the hoses that leaked slowly but burned off (evaporated) as it was passing my exhaust, thus I didn't see a leak under the car. If its not that you might need a new HG do to the fact that your loosing coolant.

[crazyychriss123]

the compression test sounds like a good plan. i got a new temp sensor a few months ago, idk how old the cap is.

[408cb7]

I had a similar problem, where water would dissappear from the radiator but did not have any visible leaks.

What I did is I changed my radiator cap and reservior tank and the problem stopped.
It turned that both cap and tank were letting the water escape and evaporate, thats why there was no visible leaks.

[crazyychriss123]

problem is fixed.




for the time being

[93Accordian]

Sounds like air in the system. Have you tried to bleed it?