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A short precurser, approx. four weeks ago I took my car in for a CV joint and a fresh change of antifreeze. The guy decided to flush my system, even though he knew that there was stop leak in the system. Well that flush broke stuff loose and killed my radiator, there went $250. I have the new rad. put in and off I go thinking I'm in good shape. Wrong. There was a leak in my heater core that got opened back up with the flush so now I'm blowing antifreeze all through my vent system, f'ing sweet.

So Frank is kind enough to sell me a used heater core at a reasonable price and got it to me quickly. So I broke down my dash, had to kill my AC charge to get to the heater core and finally got everything pulled out. The core itself was an easy replace after arguing with old, cold hoses. Well I finally get everything put back together and am ready to make sure I don't have any more problems.

Start it up, and she starts overheating. I figure just air, so I let it cool and start throwing a bit of antifreeze into the tank as it cools down and pulls fluid in. I've done this three time now, drive, overheat, fill. In the mean time my overflow tank just keeps getting fuller and fuller.

But the end result is I still have no circulation. The hose going into/out of the thermostat is cold, heater blows cold.

Having not had to bleed a turbo before, which I might add is significantly more a PIA then the NA, how much air will these things trap and will it keep my thermostat from opening? When they put in the new radiator they put in a new thermostat and I know it's in the right direction as it blew hot air at me while throwing antifreeze everywhere. Would there be more crap flowing through that it plugged my new radiator?

Ahhhh, this is killing me. A CV joint has turned into a $400 four week ordeal and my car still isn't going.

Any opinions are welcome and thanks for listening to me vent.

So after relaxing a tad and giving it time to settle down I went down to my car and I could feel the hose at the thermostat was nice and hot, sweet. So I pulled the cap, added a little fluid and went for a short drive. At first all was well, heater slowly started blowing hot air then it started to overheat and the heater quit blowing hot air. I started working my way back around the block and the heater started up again, engine's still hot though, so I pull into my garage and the heater quits again.

Just still air in the system I'm hoping. I wouldn't think that something is in my system becoming lodged and dislodged that is causing me the problems?

And to top it off, my engines running like crap. It had some hesitation after I got back from the shop after the new radiator and now at low RPM's, <2000 I can hear it missing/popping.

No CEL's but I'm going to let the coolant system cool and hopefully work some more air up to the tank and then I'll pull the codes.

This is getting a bit ridiculous.

Perhaps the coolant sensor is in a hot spot and putting it into safe mode. Is the popping excess fuel or pinging?

As for the coolant, I always squeeze the main cooling hoses while it's running to cause pressure waves to dislodge the air. Swapping the radiator is always a PITA for me. I usually have to repeat the cycle several times, usually over the course of a couple days as it will seem good for a day and then needs to be bled again. Always amazed at how much air hides in there.

As far as crap clogging it up, it's possible, but with new radiator and heater core, it would have to been residing in the block somewhere so I wouldn't think it as likely, but you never know.

Another thing is that you may have a HG gone bad and introducing air into the system.

I hate the hard ons mechanics get for flushing shit - I live by the creed that if it ain't broke don't fix it. Maintain it, yes, but that's replacing stuff as needed. The only reason to flush something is after a rebuild or it something fails and scatters debris within the system, otherwise it's asking for trouble. Transmissions are even worse. Things get set in their ways - disturbing them is only asking for bad spirits to haunt you.

Yeah, I'm hoping the hesitation issue is just the ECU freaking out. I'll clear the codes on the next go. It's definately a pop and not a ping. Sounds like it's almost back-firing or loading up on fuel and igniting in the manifold. I wouldn't think it'd be detonating considering it's happening at 1500 RPM on level ground. Thinking maybe some antifreeze dripped down into my spark plug holes and is causing issues?

I'm glad to hear that it sometimes takes this much to get all the air out. My NA's seem a lot easier to drain and refill.

And the HG... I'm really hoping it's not the case. I planned on doing them down the road for thoroughness but wanted to be able to do a 2.5 SOHC head swap at the same time. The exhaust doesn't seem to have any sweet smell to it, though it does smell of fuel.

And yeah, I'm still a little miffed why he thought flushing a system with stop-leak in it would be a good idea.

Unfortunately, the only failure mode I've seen the HGs display in these is the air bubble problem, which gets worse until you can't keep it cool at all. Never saw any oil or coolant mixing or smoking.

i had the same thing with my car. the coolant line to the radiator blew off. so i reattached it and filled up the radiator and coolant reservoir. it kept overheating. so i went to autozone and bought a coolant burper thing...



it just screws onto the top of the expansion tank like a radiator cap. even though i had thought i filled the radiator up all the way and whatnot, the engine ended up soaking up another gallon of coolant!!


so yeah try that lol

oh and to address the problem of a HG being blown: if you actually do use the coolant burping thingy look for what kind of bubbles come out. typically when burping it you'll get a large number of big bubbles and a few small ones. if you have a blown HG then a bunch of small bubbles will continue to surface.

just fyi.

You might see the bubbles, but at that point you're probably into chronic overheating problems. I doubt he's got a bad HG anyway as, unless it overheated, the coincidence would be a little odd.

good point.

Well I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for the HG but after running it for 8 mi she didn't overheat. Albeit this was the 5th time I've taken it out today.I was able to get on boost for a few moments and the gauge held steady. Heat was there all the time. I heard it gurgling a little bit more but I think I got most of the bubbles out. I'll check it tomorrow morning and top it off. I'll be keeping a vigilant eye on it and hope I don't see any extra air from the HG.

The mis-firing is now my next concern. I need to go hunting/digging for the test connectors. Somebody's played a little with the wires down there so I'm hoping they didn't delete anything they shouldn't have. It is definately worse under load and appears to be a little more RPM independant. I am installing a boost gauge and still have a line closed off with scotch tape so hopefully it's just a vac leak. It's bad enough that at idle at a stop sign the engine close near close to dieing.

Thanks for the input Steve and Aaron. And I definately need to get one of those fillers because this has been a PIA to get bled this way.

trick to bleeding hard to bleed cars:
lift the nose up in the air so the rad cap is higher than ANYTHING else in the system

The turbo's don't have a radiator cap. They are filled and bled through the coolant tank.

Well overheating seems to be cured after 6 heat/cool cycles. So far so good and I'll be watching it closely for additional air.

It's still having the issue missing and hesitation under acceleration. My boost gauge is reading a steady 9psi and it will miss/pop under full boost. When this happens my needle jumps us a little and drops back down. Under idle when it starts running rough my vac. drops down to about 13 in.hg from the 18-19in. it usually sits at.

It seemed to be getting better as I was driving around testing the heating system but not gone completely. I stopped and put a bit of fresh gas in it just for good measure. Tomorrow I'll run test-mode codes.

Which needle jumps? The boost? Sounds like you might have yourself some antilag.

Haha yeah, it's my boost gauge. I'm all about the anti-lag except when it's also anti-rev. I'll have it floored and my boost gauge sits there reading a steady 9psi and nothing's happening .

Well the overheating seems to have ceased. The temp gauge is staying right where it should and I've had to add a little water but not much. I figure it's okay since I ran atleast 20-25 mi. tonight at all different speeds and boost levels trying to throw a CEL.

And the hesitation/miss seems to be rapidly clearing up. Some one seems to have snipped the black test connectors (God knows why?) but the green ones are still there. So I ran D-mode for a bit and all I get is blinky blinky blinky. No codes . I get a little hesitation and occasionally a small miss.

I'm going to run some water remover through the gas, hit the plugs, wires, etc. and see if I can clear the rest of it. Kinda confused, but happy, that this big issue has gone away on it's own after this project started like a run-away train.

Thanks to all for the suggestions and allowing me to vent.

Oh and for anyone reading with an 4eat, I had to run the car with the test connectors connected (after doing the pedal deal at startup) and then put it back in park before it got into test mode.

So I drove around last night in test mode for a good 20 min. and couldn't get it to throw a single code. It was running strong and happy, a couple of small misses but that was it.

So this morning I disconnect the test connectors and bring her on into work. Once she was half-way warmed up it started again. On-boost response was very weak, idle was very low and rough. It just wasn't running right again?

Ideas?

skid,

How about a compression test? That would be my next move. With the location of the spark plugs on the SOHC heads, it's really easy to do. Should take you about 10-15min to do all four.

Well I went and picked up a compression gauge to do the test. Turns out I could have saved myself $25.

I pulled the #4 plug (driver's side near the firewall) and it was covered in coolant and oil. Sh*t! I feel like a dolt having apparently let it get too hot and blow the HG . So now I guess it's time to read up on HG replacement. I was really hoping to wait to do HG's for when I had nice new heads to drop in.

Damn.

Thanks all for the input.

It's a real PITA, but at least it's cheap.

ah sad day. some people say you can change the HG with the engine still in but i found it easier to just pull the entire engine. and when you do it you should just do both headgaskets (just so the other one doesn't go out on you 2 weeks later lol).

plus once that's out you can spend lots of money resealing everything haha. like a new rearmain, front main, cam seals...just to be on the safe side. new water pump. check your idler pullies. you know?

that's just my opinion...

You'll definitely want to change both - the difference in labor is marginal at that point. I recommend breaking the head bolts loose while the engine is mounted unless you have an (air) impact gun with a 12-point socket that fits. I used an 18V 1/2" impact gun on mine when it was on a stand in the kitchen, cranked the hell out of them over and over and it still required a 1/2 bar with a 3' pipe extension to break them loose. Kept lifting the friggin' stand off the floor before I used the impact on it enough to loosen it for the pipe.

Oh brother,
I know how it feels. this sounds exactly like what happened to me. Unfortunately, mine got so hot it melted the knock sensor like a candle.

Jeff

Thanks for the kind words guys. They're appreciated.

I'll probably change just the one. I'm going to be pulling the engine a few months to do my 5sp swap (already have the pedal assy/hyro installed) so I'll do any 'rebuilding' at that point in time. For now I just want to get this up and going again. This all started when I dropped $200 for a CV/axle replacement, then had to drop another $250 for the radiator, then another $50 for the heater core (thank you Frank), another $30 for coolant and misc. replacement stuff, now I'm looking at another $30-40 for HG, ~$100 for a decent torque wrench and $45 for more fluids and I'll put a new temp sensor in too.

This all adds up pretty quick and I just want/need my baby going again so if it's not broken right now, I'm not fixing it.

I have joined the same club. Heater core and popped HGs...