Flushed the system

burped hte system

My air dams is still there

My coolant fan comes on

Is there anyway to check to see if its a leak in the headgasket on this.... Theres no oil in the water or water in the oil, I pulled the plugs on my back bank and they look normal .

This thing will jump up in tempeture but if I lay on the gas full throttle it will try to cool itself down but keep climping everytime I stop at a light... It has a mechanical temp gage on it mounted to the thermastate housing, Could the temp gage be mounted in the wrong area? The water pump seems to be working and will check and make sure the belt is not slipping.

Maybe the radiator the car has sat for 2years before running and the radiator is a 4cyl one with ac... I might need a bigger?

[This message has been edited by 86fieroEarl (edited 05-09-2004).]

Check the coolant pipes under the car. If they are bent at all between the rear support and the drain bung,drop the pipe. That area should be straight and any bent likely means they are pinched.

A blocked radiator would be trouble on any engine. There is no easy way to check them. You could try draining it removing it and using a dental type mirror to look inside thru the lower hose fitting.

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The only thing George Orwell got wrong was the year.

The Ogre's Fiero Cave (It's also at the top of every forum page...)

I'd say don't do any more work than you need to... Since you don't know that it's the headgasket... start testing for it. Run a compression check on all 8 cylinders, and see if any one (or two) is significantly lower than the rest. Also buy a little bike pump type dealie, and pressurize the cooling system, and check for leaks. Could also have a bad radiator. Might be something as simple as the wrong pressure cap...

I see you haven't cured your problem as yet in your other postI gave you some suggestions wellif you checked them and every thing was ok then let us move on from there so I will ask some questions.

Did it just start to over heat ..........
After the swap was the temp normal with this radiator ...........
Are you loosing water often.............
How is your water pump.............
Radiator cap is it good and holding pressure...........
Cylinder head gasket leaking in the cumbustion chamber...........

Check all these to if any apply to your car and a compression test should determine if you have a blown head gasket between cylinders.

I had a bad water pump on mine --- they're cheap at Auto Zone.

I agree with Ogre... I had a bent coolant pipe on mine (Likely from some idiot jacking it up) and it kinked off a coolant hose to very very little flow. Unbent it, and replaced the rubber hose by one we modified from Murray's, and it worked great until the bearings went.

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88 Fiero GT (in a coma up on blocks)
78 T-Bird 302

AIM: phool88fiero

I had an old car (1967 Volvo) that constantly had overheating problems at slow speeds, turns out the radiator was only flowing 5% of expected. The radiator shop treated it and got the flow upto 50%. This also explained why I would go thru water pumps.
Just a thought.

couple of head gasket overheating symptoms:
white smokey exhaust - ESPECIALY at startup
excessive pressure in the cooling system - water being pushed into resevoir
loss of compression, maybe even some missing or dieseling
crusty fauled spark plug
if its really bad, oil in water & water in oil

from the sounds of it, this is not your problem. I would be looking more at:
the thermostat not working - remove it, and see if it helps
check the coolant tubes for bends & kinks
turn your heater on, full blast with high fan, and see if it helps. if it does, your radiator is not dissapating enough heat
flush coolant system, and backflow flush if possible
if you have A/C (or had A/C), sometimes stuff will pack up between the A/C radiator & the Radiator & block airflow, you can try to clean that out - but be careful with Hi-pressure - you will bend the fins
but, most likely, its a clogged radiator, and nothing you can do but replace it....

Hey Earl,
sorry to hear you are having problems! Maybe someone else can chime in here but Earl is using a 4cyl radiator with a 4.9 v-8 in Orlando Fl

might have to switch to a v-6 radiator or an aftermarket one.

I've seen the 4.9 water pump impellers spin on the shaft. Sometimes it will move enough water to keep it cool, other times it won't. I've had a few cars with the coolant pipes crushed pretty hard, and it never seemed to affect the cooling.

New OEM is $54 with a lifetime warranty at advanced discount auto if it's the water pump.

http://www.partsamerica.com/PartDetails.asp?SourceArea=&SourcePage=SEARCHRESULTS&MfrCode=AIN&MfrPartNumber=WP627&PartType=54&PTSet=A

Im going to get a new radiator 6cyl one with a automatic, I will solve this annoying problem hehe. THe pipes underneath the car is in very good condition, Everything is kind of pointing to the radiator when the thing is warming up the pipe on the driverside will get hot first followed by the one on the passenger side.

The only reason I thought it might of been the headgasket because at one time when I was filling the system and ran it for a little there was tons of foam overflowing out the neck but the foam went away when I added more coolant. The sparkplugs look normal in all 8cyl, No oil in water and idles nice.

BTW could it be possible for coolant to leak in the tranny cooler part ?

make sure the heads are torqued properly(pm mach10; his former mechanic didn't torque the head properly, and did the same thing your discribing)

just picked up a compression tester from autozone I will update with the reading on the cyls.

Earl,
if carbon build up is the problem, then Ed Parks sells a decarbonizing kit which is supposed to work very well.
But----would that make you run hot? or is this just a problem you found along the way?

Jeff

nah the carbon is not causing it to overheat but now I know that my headgasket is fine with the readings so now Im going to move to doing something about the radiator I will probally get a new v6 radiator with ac this weekend.
I took a pic of each spark plug they all looked normal cept for the carbon buildup.