I've been working on my truck for a week now. Got everything done, and it fired right up. It stayed cranked for several minutes and died on me when I put it in drive. It took a few tries to crank it back up and that was when I held the accelerator all the way down to the floor. Right now it is running and idling good. Has a different sound with the all the work I did (plenum fix and kegger mod, etc.). However, here is the big but . . . it is overheating. I put over 1.5 gallons of antifreeze in so far, and the temperature gauge is pegging out. This has happened twice. Any ideas what might be wrong? Thanks.

 

pull your dipstick and I'll tell you what you are thinking about...


milk chocolate...

yes, I am psychic..

don't attempt to run your truck until you sort this out..

 

Air lock maybe. What i always do is after you have got all your antifreeze in the rad, open the cap and turn the truck on. Get the hose running next to you a little so you can top up the rad and start squeezing the upper rad hose. It should bubble lots and you will be able to tell when the rad hoze is full of fluid. Keep squeezing and adding water cause your gonna definetly loose some antifreeze. Its messy but it works for me everytime. Keep doing it until the rad hose is full and just keep checkin the guage.

Is there any reason you may have put the thermostat in upside down?

Good luck

 

Lol I read your post to fast, dont try my idea!

 

If it maxes out almost instantly, then its a bad connection on the coolant temperature probe. Try getting a better connection or reversing the connection of the plug...

 

It sounds like maybe a leak in your cooling system. Is the temp going way up or is it just boiling over? Coolant leaks cause it to boil over at too low a temp then all the coolant is gone then it reeaally heats up.

 

and if that leak is an intake passage flooding the valley, it makes oil look just like chocolate fon-freakin-du...

 

Let me take a look and see what I can come up with. Maybe, it's just air trapped in the system. I will pull the dipstick first and just see what it looks like.

 

Beautiful fresh oil on the dipstick. I just let it run a while and it took a while to overheat (say about 5 minutes). Once it got to 200, it started climbing more quickly. Stayed between 130 and 200 for a little while, though. Also, when I turned the engine off, I could hear the coolant bubbling over into the overflow. What do you think is going you?

 

well that is very good news.. now that it is behind us:

did you test your t-stat? I'd guess one in five bad right out of the box..