I was driving on the freeway at 4am this morning when all of a sudden I noticed that the temperature was all the way over on the right/hot side. Not wanting my engine to catch on fire or anything, I pulled off and rolled to the first gas station. Turned out that my coolant was ALL gone. Since the gas station was closed I had to walk over to Walmart and buy some coolant. I filled it up and nothing leaked out right away. When I started the car the temperature was down low again, but quickly shot back up to too hot once I got back on the freeway to drive home. The radiator now has green stuff all over it.

I was researching some similar problems here on this site, and someone was saying that a broken water pump could cause problems with overheating, leaking coolant etc, but this seems to be a clear case of a radiator needing to be replaced, right?

I had a new radiator put in two years ago, should they really not last longer then that? Anyone know where to get a cheap, but still decent radiator? How are they too replace?

 

What you need to do is get your hands on a pressure tester and apply pressure to the system. As you pump the up the tester you will be able to listen for an amount to air rushing and get a general location of where it is comeing from. I wouldnt go out and just throw a radiator in just to have it not be the radiator.

 

there might be a crack in your radiator, that will spray the green stuff all over your engine. This happened to me and i had to replace my radiator.
but it was overheating on freeway? might want to make sure fans are working too...

 

It may very well be a crack in the radiator from a peice of debris, a pressure tester will diagnose that very quickly. It overheated because of the coolant leak. No coolant = no cooling being done. Fans dont play a big roll when the coolant is not there.

 

fans play a role when on freeway though, if there was no coolant but on freeway your likely not to overheat as fast as op is saying

 

Actually fans play less of a role during freeway speeds b/c as the air rushes through the radiator, particularly at 4 am, it can cool the radiator quite well on its own. It is at idle and slower, stop and go speeds that the fans are really critical. Unless there is a coolant leak and you have no/low coolant in which case the fans won't do anything for you.

Fill the system back with purified water (preferably) and pressurize it as suggested. That will tell you exactly where your leak is. It's possible that your 2 year old radiator is the culprit, esp if it's aftermarket. Mine only lasted one year.

GL

 

Im on my 3rd radiator. The stock radiators are cheap and crack easily. Go to radiators.com and when the automated thing starts talking to you ask it if it is a real person and you will get a discount...

 

If you had a new radiator put in 2 years ago, it shouldn't go out that fast. Not unless you're pushing it a lot.

All I can say is that it isn't the water pump. If you're getting coolant everywhere, it means your pump is working properly. If not, there shouldn't be any water flowing or bursting out at all.

Check for hose leaks. Upper and lower radiator hoses. Dont forget about the little 3/4" hoses. If anything, they should be wearing out if you've replaced a radiator and not change those. They wear out faster than radiators do. Way faster in terms of life. Normally, the back sides of these hoses will burst and it's harder to see.