grimview

Several months ago I replaced the coolant reservoir, cap & radiator. The car seamed fine until a long trip where after driving around in slow traffic for several hours the straw in reservoir melted & coolant was lost. I replaced the reservoir bottle & straw. Since then, I've had to add more coolant & been surprised by the needle in hot every so often. Also oil looks fine. Both heater and air work.
Recently I discovered steam is bubbling the coolant out of the bottle. I tried bleeding out the air and here is what happens:
I run the engine, set to heat with heat off, to warm up the engine & circulate coolant. Fan turns on but every briefly. Once I notice bottle filling with coolant, I watch for bubbles. It takes a while for both tubes going the radiator to heat up, before bubbling even starts. If bubbles are to high, lift straw to keep the steam from pushing coolant out. Steam may take 3 minutes to stop. As coolant rises in bottle I turn on heater. During this test heat needle on dashboard doesn't seem to move much. Needle only moves after coolant bubbles out emptying reserve bottle. When steam is done & bottle filled to the top, & fan turns on coolant is sucked back in.
I repeat this test several times with some variation, including turning off engine to stop overflow. Where is all the steam coming from & how do I stop it?

Lost Again

I'm a bit confused but I'm old and slow.

Proper way of bleeding the system. With the car cold set the heat to max, ac off, blower off, open the cap, loosen the bleeder on the t-stat housing and SLOWLY add coolant to the rad until a steady stream comes out of the bleeder. Close the bleeder.

Replace the cap to THE FIRST CLICK - warning, FIRST CLICK ONLY. Let the car run for ~20 minutes or until the cooling fans (BOTH should run) cycle at least twice.

Shut the car off. Remove the cap - back to the warning, the reason for ONE CLICK is that pressure will not build in the system.......DO NOT BURN youself. Top off the rad and the res. Replace the cap all the way....Done, I've done this more times than you want to count.

One thing that does have me worried and this just might be a typo. When the car is running and the temp starts to climb - BOTH fans should come on. You made a "fan" - single - statement?

EDIT: Some will tell you to watch this video and buy this funnel.....again I can't tell you how many times I've used this method (and read the FSM) on these and never had an issue......guess I'm the lucky one

NovaKnowledgeNow

Sounds like a blown head gasket. Go to Auto Zone and get the block tester kit.

Also, make sure you have the heat set to "high heat" to bleed the air of the heater core.