The cooling system saga continues. I guess y'all are tired of this already but I think I have gotten to the bottom of my issues with the cooling and may have gotten the hard start issue resolved...
Initially, it was a leaking oil cooler that was allowing oil into the coolant. Then Once that was fixed, I was finally able to drive the car, it got hot and overheated. This I thought was the coolant tank leaking but it was a hose that blew off that BACK side of the manifold that went from the cooler to the tank. This was a PIA to fix because the back side of the manifold is deep in the dark corner of the engine bay. Long arms and no way to see what I was doing, made this quite difficult. Stubbornness can be an asset with these kinds of mechanical issues tho. Once that was on and not leaking, the car again overheated and so did my language... I did have the new coolant tank on hand because I ordered it when I thought is was bad but the hose had blown off. The old tank had a crack in it that was not visible but allowed water to leak out..another overheat and another FULL swear jar.
So, installing the thermostat is a pretty easy task. Lift the car, drain the coolant and unbolt the housing. First of all, it's not easy to figure out what you get when you're buying this online. Some show the thermostat, some the housing and some both. Well, I took a shot at one that had the picture of the actual thermostat as that is what I really needed and imagine my surprise when I opened the box and the full set was in there; Thermostat, housing and gasket!!
Break out the wrenches and get that bad boy off the side of the engine.
4- 10mm bolts and off it pops and some coolant rushes out. I had my bucket at the ready and caught 95% of what can raining down.
Well, this is what I expected to see as the thermostat is held into the housing and not onto the engine. Nice and clean in there and no debris.
So now to inspect the housing and the old thermostat. I intended to take it out and boil it on the stove just to see what was going on. Well that isn't an option with this setup:
Hmmm, the old thermostat seems to have melted away or something!! Maybe they should have use those idiotic Torx security bolts on the thermostats!! Looks like this is what kids really want to steal... Well, this could be part of the problem. No thermostat allows the coolant to move to fast thru the radiators to cool down and shed the heat. This over time will let the engine overheat. It was a common thing to do when I was a kid and we were running race cars at the local dirt track. We didn't want a thermostat failure so we popped the center out to provide the needed restriction in coolant flow but not have a mechanical part that can fail mid race. We had lots of other failure, but I digress to far....
The new one looks good and will replace the missing part.
It has the proper gasket, but being old school, I still use a really small bit of sealant on gaskets like this. I got to love 3-Bond, while working on my motorcycles. So I continue to use a small thin coating (not slobbering) on these surfaces. A very small amount goes a long way, so use sealants in moderation! Sort of a belt AND suspenders approach to leaks.
Now, on to the Crank Position Sensor (CPS), to try and get in front of the HOT hard starting issue.
The CPS lives in a dark place like the back of the coolant manifold.
The red arrow is the actual location of the CPS and the blue arrow is the wire that goes to it. It's tucked away on there. It's not tight, but there are lots of things in the way.
It's in there, held in with 1 allen screw. Look deeply into the cavern and there she is.
CPS plug, is the gray one and the Back 02 sensor plug is the black one in the way and needs to be unbolted from the engine. No need to unplug it.. These are up behind the exhaust, axles and frame pieces. They are both hard to unplug. To remove the CPS I had to remove the right rear wheel and use an 18" extension on my ratchet to get in there and turn out the 5mm Allen bolt. Once the wheel was off and the long extension it was a minute to get it out and the new one in.
OK, so we pour the coolant back in, add some new, break out a new gallon of demineralized water and top off the system. Fire up the engine, let it war and burp what air comes out. Feeling good about having a thermostat in the engine now and hoping this is the END of the overheating.
Top it off and go for a quick spin. Well, this did not end like I wanted. The temps climbed after a short while and when the needle got to the middle hash mark, I headed back to home.
I open the trunk and see steam. I have seen this each time I came back and i was thinking that this is just water steaming off that was splashed around during the refill. Since it's gotten hot than I'm comfortable with AGAIN, I head to the swear jar in advance and empty my pockets. Missus better 7/8ths hears the shouting outside and comes to take a look at what the commotion is all about. She's used to the garage sounding like a Tourette's convention when things don't go right but this was alarming in her opinion.
Steam from the coolant tank and a high temp is bad, bad, bad.
Why does steam come from here???
Well, I can tell you why...
Missus better 7/8ths comes out and looks in the trunk and says; there is steam coming out of that little box thing back there! That can't be good. Well, I bite my tongue and don't make the "captain obvious" comment and go over to stare holes in the coolant tank and begin to think about cracked heads. That is a dark place! Well, the Missus looks closely and turn to me to ask why is water squirting out of that black thingy with the shiny screws all around it. Even a guy having a Tourette's attack knows that coolant should not be coming out from back here. So we look closely and see a stream of water from the bleeder valve that shouldn't be there. Brand new OEM tank and it's defective. Back to the swear jar and it's full so I begin to fill a box.
Why does that have to be leaking?? Well at least it is replaceable. I have the old tank still so I remove the valve from that tank and mount it to the new tank. This worked and made a good seal, so I went out for another spin and this time the cooling system worked like it should. The needle of the gauge stayed very steady in the middle of the 0 the whole time. After about 10 minutes the little red light began to flash for the coolant tank being low and that is to be expected as air makes it's way out of the system. I headed for the garage and there was no steaming, no overheating, and no swearing.
The car also started when hot, not easily but it did start. I have to work on this a bit more I guess.