Topic: ASAP- Cooling issues

[jrock]

Well driving home from the Sac. Sportsman's Expo my idiot lights came on (Auto. Temp, Parking Brake, ??). I thought nothing of it as this has happened before, I thought it was my Neutral Start jump I had made during my trans swap. So a few minutes later I noticed my temp was right at the line for red. I slowed but kept driving because the needle did not move and I was a few miles from home. On the off ramp the needle went red and I pulled over and killed the engine.
As I pulled off the freeway I put the heater on full blast hot. I got cold air only.
Popped the hood and water everywhere. Mainly around the radiator cap and reservoir. No water in oil or tailpipe. So I ruled out head gasket. I thought thermostat. So I pulled it, filled her up and drove home.
On the way home the temp rose to just shy of red, in about one minute,  and I turned on the heater hot and got cold air again. The temp fell off after about two minutes and settled at just above center (50%). Normal temp is about 25%. I turned the heater off and got no change in temp.
What is wrong? Help.

[93tonkatoy]

When you get cold air from the vent when set to hot on an overheating engine, it is because there is no water in the system to get the heat from.

1. Get a timing light, and check your timing. If the timing is too far advanced, it will cause extra heat to build up in the engine, and may be too much for a marginally performing system to get rid of.

2. REMOVE the thermostat, make a temporary gasket for the neck, put it back together, fill the coolant system back up (start the engine and make sure all air pockets are burped out), and drive it for about 5 min. or so. watch your temp. does it heat up or even overheat? If it does not, I would say bad thermostat.

My money is on the thermostat being stuck closed or at least partially closed.

[jrock [OP]]

I thought the thermo got stuck closed so I pulled the thermo.

[Tallchevy]

Same thing just happened to me in my 89. Water pump 

[jrock [OP]]

you think. ill check how the fluid mixed in the morning

[Tallchevy]

You don't have to have mixing fluids to have a bad head gasket. Since you have the t-stat out, remove the radiator cap (engine cold of course) & start the engine. You should see the water flowing. If it isn't then the impeller could be spinning on the shaft or corroded away causing no water flow.

[jrock [OP]]

ok ill do that in the morning, like 4.5 hrs from now. ill post then.

im thinking its an air bubble in the system. I had a similar issue after i flushed the rad. would get into the red and then would cool down to normal. It still would do it every so often if i warm it up with the heater on hot.

[jrock [OP]]

Thank you Tallchevy.
So i started her and pulled the rad cap and saw no movment. .
So i looked to see if the fan was moveing and it wasn't. Wait.
Looked and found the alt had no pully. YES.
The pully broke and was sitting under the alt. This explains the idiot lights. Last time they did this my battery had fallen over and come undone.

Anyone know the part number on the alt waterpump pully?

[jrock [OP]]

three new belts and Im 99.9% sure its fixed but yah never know.
thanks.

[Tallchevy]

Sweet 

[93tonkatoy]

  It's always the things that we should have thought of. The bearings in my water pump went out last year, had to replace the pump. I shoulda thought about that! You> <Me. Glad it was something easy to fix. 

[Plekto]

Yeah, replacing old pulleys when you have it all apart is a good bit of preventative maintainence on older vehicles.

[jrock [OP]]

Well logging of has been a pita. But the things running great now. I really need to put the thermostat back in though. It hardly gets over the bottom line on the engine temp.
And after I put the new pulleys on my truck spat out the PS belt. I had to get a new. I think I put it on too tight. Works good now.
Thanks again.

[Tallchevy]

Glad to hear it was a minor problem