Like I said, the heat goes back to normal while moving. Do I need to replace it or can it be thoroughly water pump isn’t that old (about 5 years and 50,000 miles on it) but I guess anything is possible. God I hope there isn’t any more DexCool in there. I was not aware of that and I’m not sure if they did this the last time it was flushed. Thanks for the info on the heater core and the heat needing to be on when purged. I’ll probably do this first and see what the outcome is.Īir in the system - I guess it’s possible but I would have thought this would have reared its head a long time ago when they system was flushed (a few years ago). Thermostat - I agree that replacing this is simple. Should give me some piece of mind if negative. I will do the hydrocarbon test within the coolant. I worked as an avionics engineer for nine years and sensors just don’t fail in this manner. You can do a flow test on the agree with your skepticism of the issue being bad sensor. Other possibilities are a missing radiator shroud, a missing splash shield (they can direct cooling air), and even eroded impellers on the water pump. The radiator can be checked by scanning it with an infrared thermometer. If the valve wasn’t open when the system was purged, there may have been air trapped in the heater core and it may still be in the system causing havoc… and maybe even contaminating your new coolant with the evil Dexcool. On many cars there’s a diverter valve on the firewall that diverts the coolant through the heater core when the heat’s on and shuts the line when it’s off. Often people forget to turn the heat on and turn the key to ON when they purge the system. I’d change it.Īir in the cooling system is also a possibility. The bubbles would be combustion gasses blowing through the breech and migrating up to the cooling system high point… the fill hole. If with the radiator cap removed and the engine running bubbles are coming up out of the fill hole, focus on the headgasket. If you feel the test is giving you a questionable result, a cylinder leakdown test is well worth doing. I doubt if you have a blown head gasket, but with a kit a lab test (checking the coolant for evidence of hydrocarbons) is easy and cheap to do, so I’d do one just to be on the safe side. Very, very, very rarely have I seen it actually be a bad sensor… although it usually gets the blame first. I’m leaning toward the radiator because once I get some air flow across it, the coolant temp gets back to normal.Īlso, the A/C is sometimes working great and blowing really cold and other times it is just slightly cold. So thoughts on what might be the issue, radiator, thermostat, sensor, water pump, something else? I’m pretty sure it’s not the sensor because sensors don’t fail in this manner (they fail either high or low). In fact, driving through the mountains this summer going up inclines, the car would tend to start overheating. So the radiator may not be operating at full capacity. Now when the coolant system was flushed, I am not completely sure that all that ‘mud’ was flushed out of the radiator. This caused the coolant to turn into ‘mud’ within the radiator and eventually the head gasket failed completely and I had to have that replaced along with putting in ethylene glycol to replace the DexCool. It originally had that crappy DexCool in it that then ate away at the cheap plastic head gasket causing oil to leak into the coolant system. These are less than a year old and are both operating as expected.Ī little history on the engine. I had the cooling fan assembly replaced last year after one of the fans failed. The coolant temperature seems to go up when the car is idling but when moving it starts to go back down to normal. It is still fluctuating however after the converter replacement. I recently had the check engine light on with the P0420 code which indicates a bad catalytic converter, I had that replaced and I was hoping that maybe the lack of exhaust flow through the converter was causing the overheating. Going from 200 degrees up to 240 sometimes 260 degrees. The coolant temperature started fluctuating recently. The car has 180K+ miles on the original engine. Compared to my 2015 GMC Terrain, it appears the heater isn't blowing as hot of air, leading me to think I want to back flush the heater core.I have a 2002 Chevy Impala with the 3.4L engine. I plan to continue to use Dex-cool 50-50 mix as noted in the manual. Which brings me to the below notes/questions: When looking online it appears fairly critical to change dex-cool coolant every 5 years. I've done coolant changes/flushes on older vehicles so I have some experience, but none with dex-cool. My vehicle is approaching the 5 year mark and I'm looking at what is recommended when changing/flushing the coolant.
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