Mark:
This is starting to sound suspiciously like a blown head gasket
to me.
Any white smoke in the exhaust? Bubbles in the coolant? Is one of your
spark
plugs all clean and shiny, like it is getting steam cleaned while the
engine
is running? Does your overflow bottle seem unusually full, or perhaps
you
seem to be losing more coolant from your radiator than seems normal? Any
dribbles of coolant running down the side of the block from the vicinity
of the head?
While it is unlikely to be a BHG, the clues are beginning to
mount.
Didn't you mention that the engine had been rebuilt in the recent past?
Check for the correct head gasket, and that it was installed correct
side
up. Later cars should have a 3/8" tab on the head gasket protruding from
between the head and block at the rear of the motor. If it is missing or
at the front of the block (behind the water pump) then the gasket is
wrong
or incorrectly installed.
Conversely, on the earlier motor, and you have a tab at either
the front or rear of the block, you have the wrong head gasket.
Wrong/incorrect
head gaskets will almost always blow after a few months.
I don't remember which year they changed the gasket design, but
I am pretty
sure it coincided with the manifold change: log style intake=earlier
gasket,
swept style intake=later head gasket.
Here's hoping I am wrong.
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-6pack@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-6pack@autox.team.net] On
Behalf Of Mark Martin
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2004 5:27 PM
To: 6pack@autox.team.net
Subject: Running Hot UPDATE
First I'd like to thank those who responded to my earlier inquiry.
As suggested, I placed a thermometer in the radiator opening and after
nearly 40 minutes, the temperature stayed steady at 200 degrees (no
pusher
fan) with the temp gauge reading 3/4 (3 quarters). At exactly 160
degrees
the thermostat opened as I could see the water start to move. Try as I
might, I couldn't get it to run into the red as it was doing previously.
I then placed the cap back on the radiator and within 5 minutes the temp
gauge started creeping toward the red.
<snip>
|