Hey guys, i've got another one for yall....Had my radiator repaired recently from a hole, but now im losing water from my overflow hose of the side of the neck. At first it wasnt bad, went about two weeks without trouble, but the temp light came on and i had to put some coolant in yesterday, and then now again today! My dad says that my cap might be the trouble, which i bought brand new at the repair job, its a 13 pounder,which he says might be a little too high fer my ole mav-what do you guys run? He also says that it might be a faulty head gasket blowing compression into my coolant system. Any advice???? Time for a new radiator? I hope its just the cap...cause i dont want to garage the car yet. Thanks yall!
Pressure check your rad cap. pressure test your cooling system. If there is a bad gasket then the pressure increase or loss should show up. Take off rad cap, start engine with rad full and check to see if there is a lot of bubbling goin on in the top of the rad. If there is could be as your father said. check compreesion on all cylinders. shouldn't be more that 10 % difference between cylinders. this should show you were the problems lies other than you might just need a new rad completely. Hope this helps. Ron PS I use a 15lb cap
As stated, there are many reasons to lose coolant. The cap should be a bit higher on pressure. There are some things you should know about. A pressure cap is a two way device. It should be used with a coolant recovery bottle. Not using a bottle means when coolant is pushed out, there is no chance for the system to suck it back into the radiator when cool down occurrs. This takes away that extra saftey margin in hot weather. If the radiator is partially plugged in the lower 1/3, the engine will start to run hot on hard pulls and push coolant out the cap from the reduced cooling capacity. If there is a blown head gasket, it heats the coolant still more as well as pressurizes the system beyond the cap value pushing coolant out.
Thanks, and yeah this is pretty much what he said, but i'll have to try the recovery bottle thing first...Good Idea Bluegrass.
