Well I checked the weep hole today and sure enough there was coolant coming from it. Picked up a 30 pack of Bud Light, a new water pump, and a fan clutch wrench. Wish me luck. Any tips on swapping this sucker out?

 

So I swapped out the water pump today. The old one definately had a lot of wiggle to it. Put the new one on, filled up the radiator. I turned it on with the cap off and let it run for about 15 mins. I filled the radiator as it drained. Everything seemed good. Also used the bleeder screw to let some air out.

Left the shop and the temp gauge was dead center and the heat was working. During the 5-10 min drive home the gauge went higher than ever. The "check gauges" light came on and I pulled over. I bled the system while it was still on and the temp dropped while in park. Drove it the rest of the way home and it overheated again.

Now what? HOPING, I just still have air in the system. One thing that I noticed is the the upper hose gets hot but the rad cap and lower hose seem to remain cool. With only 20k miles on the truck I highly doubt the radiator is clogged. I'm not seeing any leaks from anywhere now. This one has me baffled for now.

 

could the t-stat be stuck? and not allowing coolant to flow?

 

Replaced the tstat the other day. That was my first step in solving this problem. Now water pump (like I said I noticed it wobbled horribly and needed to come out). I will continue to try to "burp" the system. Other than that I'm stumped.

 

park it on a incline front up...i hear thats works well...

 

Did you check to see if the radiator is leaking? Also, pull the dipstick for the oil and see if it looks ok. If there's water in the oil it will look like a milkshake.

 

Radiator doesn't appear to have any leaks at all. With over 2' of snow on the ground and melting snow dripping from everywhere it makes it a little hard to tell. Almost postivite it's not leaking though.

Oil looks fine. If it was milky, I would just drive the truck off of a bridge. lol. Head gaskets are no fun. Also, floorboards are not wet so the heater core doesn't seem to be bad. I'm seriously assuming it's a HUGE air pocket in the system. I'm just going to keep trying to burp it using the various methods I have read. Nose up, radiator cap off, bleed valve on upper rad hose, etc. Hopefully one of those will work. There isn't too much more to the cooling system that I could think to check. Like I said, there is no way the rad is clogged at 20k miles but if all else fails I guess I will check that as well.

 

A trick my granddad taught me who was a mechanic was when I changed the thermostat to get all the air out quickly was to open the thermostat while it was out. Put asprin between the housing and the spring plate, then install it. it would let the fluid run through like it was open and the asprin would dissipate eventually not hurting the cooling system or the thermostat but would let you get all the air out of the system quickly.

 

Sounds like a nifty trick. Too late for me though. Thermostat is already in and I'm not about to undo the lower rad hose again to get it back out. Good to know for the future though.

 

I would say you have a air pocket that you haven't gotten out yet. It might be worth it to pull the T-stat back out and use the asprin trick. I have done that before and it works.