Heres the deal, I was driving and noticed my temp guage moving above normal, i got to my friends house, and checked the hoses. top hose was hot and bottem hose was cold. checked coolant and filled up. ran and drove to dinner then back home. no more temp issues with guage. I got home today from work and checked the hoses again and top was hot but bottem was cold/warm. no where near as hot as the top. Is my thermostat not opening or my water pump out? how can i tell? timing belt is fine but i don't know if my thermostat is opening. I'm goin to burp the system now and see what happens. any takers on how to check for the two?

 

Your thermostat has taken a shat !
Replace it and if it still does it then you might have a bad lower rad hose with it's inner layer collapsing under the vacum cutting off the flow. This would usually not happen at idle .

Hope this helps,

 

Mine was doing this exact same thing about 4 days ago. I put in more coolant and water while squeezing the hoses and it remedied the problem. It might be an air bubble or just a little low on fluid. And then start the car and watch the coolant from the top with the rad cap off to see if it is flowing. Hope this helps.

 

i'm going to go burp the system and see what happens. The thermostat shouldn't have taken a crap, i replaced it less than 9k miles ago. I need to run some arrins and will see if it goes above the normal op temp again.

 

sweet. i'm goin to try that later tonight. any other suggestions?

 

did that work out for you guys?? I'm having the same problem now.. I already changed the thermostat so I think I'm gonna change the lower and upper rad hoses. Could it have anything to do with the heater core?? My heater doesn't blow hot air.

 

If your heater isnt blowing hot air its because there isnt enough rad fluid to heat up. I bet my left nut you are low on water/rad fluid. Just top it up right to the top and fill your overflow tank accordingly and I bet that fixes it. My Teg did this and thats all it was. It blew hot air immediately after doing this.

 

top off fluid and make sure your over flow tank is connected correctly. if not, it will pull the fluid out!

B16er: did u use just stright water? my friends heater core isn't blowing hot air out.

 

Yeah I used straight water at the time because it was summer so there was no chance of it freezing. But I am in BC Canada and its cold right now so a 60 water 40 rad fluid is what i would do in freezing climate. But pure water would be fine in a warm, above 0 climate.

 

You should ALWAYS use 50/50 mixture of Water/coolant! The Antifreeze helps the water obtain a higher boiling point and a lower freezing point. Also using just water aids in corrosion in the block, which isn't good.
I would totally drain your system and put in a 50/50 mixture. Use fresh antifreeze too. Be sure to bleed it (burp it).

See if that works.

 

either your thermostat is stuck closed, you got a bubble in the system, or your low on coolant because of a leak.

ok maybe your tstat isnt stuck closed..never mind about that one.

 

so if you squeeze the lower radiator hose and it gurgles funny, does that indicate an airbubble?

 

i dont know.. but to be safe why dont you just start the car with no rad cap let it run untill it stop burping bubbles and top it up if it needs it. then to be extra safe use the coolant bleed screw by the tstat .