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'04 GTP Overheating disaster

K

kman789

New member
Hey guys,

I got a nice '04 GTP last spring, and I've loved the car. only 90k miles on her, and she drove great - up until 3 weeks ago.

It all started with a plastic elbow to the heater core cracking, and basically falling apart flowing coolant everywhere.
After that, I took it to a shop to have it replaced. Thought my problems were over, but I was wrong. After that it began to overheat almost every time I drove it, (didn't drive it when it got in the red, just very hot) and occassionally it would hit the red and I had to shut her off. Thats when the misfires began and I realized my head gasket was blown.
Took her in to have the head gasket replaced, got it back and drives great again, no missing, accelerates smooth as can be.

But it is still overheating. (Just as a note, I don't do much city driving but only ever noticed it running ridiculously hot when on the highway, and sometimes while stopped at a light). Took it back again, they replaced the thermostat (which I was hesitant to think it was that) and bled the air out of the line again.
Never hit the red but on my drive home I took the highway and she got up 2 ticks below the red, but never any higher. I am still concerned as I have never had it run that high before any of this happened. Just went out for a spin then let it sit in the drive for 20 minutes idling and it went a little over halfway on the gauge, back down below half, and up again a few times. Never any higher, but it used to always be consistantly JUST below the halfway mark on the gauge.

Sorry for writing this short story, but if anyone has any advice I would love to hear it. If it comes down to it I will take her back to the shop again Tuesday (boy they are sick of seeing me and I am sick of seeing them) but if I can figure it out over the long weekend I would love to.
 


Honestly to me it sounds like the thermostat is working as it should now. It coolant temp rises and then once it's over the thermostats temp it opens and cools back down. Or the low speed fan is coming on and cooling it off.

If you own a handheld scanner that does live data you could just plug it in and read the coolant temp that the motor is seeing. Likely is the range of 195-205 degrees.
 
I will check that out right now.

Main thing leaving me concerned is I've never seen the temperature go up as high as it went on my way home from getting thermostat changed, before all of this started that is, and I've had the car over a year. Also would be a huge coincidence as all of this was in the span of 3 weeks, wasn't overheating before the heater core elbow broke.
 
sounds like you still have air in the system.
on a cool engine (after a drive, let it cool 30 mins), take off the radiator cap. make sure it's full.
Start the car, let it run until the tstat opens and temperature rises. Open the bleed screw on the tstat housing until you get a good stream of coolant the close the screw.
Top off the radiator again. keep an eye on the temperature, and repeat again if needed.
Finally put the radiator cap on, make sure the overflow bottle is filled, shut off the car.
 
In response to fivefingerdeathpunch, I just ran it for a drive and let it idle. Lowest it was after heating up was 216 F, highest it got was 228 F.

I will try that. The shop bled it yesterday when I picked it up right in front of me for a half hour had bubbles coming up in a no spill funnel, and it still shot up the next morning, so I'm wary of that helping but I may as well give it a try.
 


01grandpri said:
Put a 180 thermostat and it will stay below half


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Click to expand...


Not with air in the system and factory fan settings. It will still rise while sitting still.







And to the OP, I will have to agree with the other guy now. It still seems that there might be air in the cooling system still.
 
kman789 said:
In response to fivefingerdeathpunch, I just ran it for a drive and let it idle. Lowest it was after heating up was 216 F, highest it got was 228 F.

I will try that. The shop bled it yesterday when I picked it up right in front of me for a half hour had bubbles coming up in a no spill funnel, and it still shot up the next morning, so I'm wary of that helping but I may as well give it a try.
Click to expand...


thats pretty normal temps for a 04 up car, for some dumb reason the fan temp on settings are set to 217, and 228 ironically.....

only way to lower it is to get a tuned pcm with lower fan temp settings. the 180 t stat wont help really.
 
When I got back and it was idling the fans were both on, temp around 217-220.

I'm starting to think (and hope) that it's just simple air in the system still as I've heard these cars can be a pain in the ass to get all of the air out.
I will try it out tomorrow and post results.
 
its not that bad. just let it idle rad cap off till the fans tune on, fans on you know the t stat is open, then open the bleeder. then top off the rad. check the rad level the next few mornings and fill if needed.
 
When I bled my cooling system, I overfilled my reservoir and just keep cracking the bleeder screw. Eventually nothing else got sucked in, and only coolant spewed out.
 


It's normal. You don't recall it because you weren't paying attention to it before until this happened now you are hyper vigilant about it now. What you are describing is normal. Putting in a lower thermostat isn't going to help the fan settings. It just means that the swing will be more than it is now. Believe me I tried all that. For some reason my 05'gtp has a 5/8" radiator instead of a a 1" down here where it regularly gets over 100* during the summer my car will not keep up and will actually have to use the fans to keep up when the temp is over 90. Two things I found were the covers that go over the condensor and the radiator were missing, putting them in place dropped temps about 10* and adding a stand alone trans cooler dropped the temps another 10 degrees and lowered trans temps by 30-40*. It still gets too hot but I lowered the turn on temp to 210. It's not ideal but it seems these cars have horrible ducting.

Jeff
 
Is there supposed to be 2 roughly 2 foot long plastic pieces that fit above the radiator and cooling fan to cover up the space in between them?
I found a plastic piece that looked broken off sitting off the the side.
So there is about a 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch gap in between radiator and cooling fan on the top.
That doesn't seem right.
 
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Shop cleaned out radiator said they boiled it out. Haven't driven it too far but it seems to be doing much better.
Stlll 5-10 degrees high but I haven't replaced the radiator covers yet so I think we're good!
 
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