My Grandma drives an old celebrity box style i dunno the yea id say 85 ish it keeps overheating i cant figure it out

THINGS IVE DONE :

Changed radiator
Thermostat (twice)
Flushed system
Cleaned Heator core
Hard wired the fan to a switch so its always on when the car is

any other ideas ????

 

What makes you think it's overheating? What I mean is: steam? overflow? cold heater? temp light?

4 cylinder or 6?

With any coolant system service, it is important to bleed the air out of the system. Any of the work you have done will result in trapped air (except the fan wiring). Heated air wont open the thermostat as readily as hot water. I always purchase thermostats with a relief 'valve' in them. If you don't have one, take your thermostat out and drill a very small hole in the flange (v-6), if you have a 4-tech just make sure the block is full before inserting the t-stat.

If the temp light is on, could it be bad?

Worst case? Blown head gasket or cracked head causing pressure in the system.

 

4cyl its got a pressure relief **** on ratiator wich squirts everywhere if it drive more the 10 minutes the temp rises on the gauge very fast the air comes out warm tho


could it just be trapped air ?

 

After driving 10 minutes the engine is fully warmed up. Coolant will spray out if you take off the radiator cap on any vehicle.

I suspect a faulty gauge reading. HOWEVER...

Take the oil filler cap off and look at the underside of it. If it is covered with a foamy, milky brown substance, you could be looking at a head gasket. A compression test would be in order.

After driving 10 minutes does the engine ping or lose power?

 

no it sprays out the pressure relief cap (im not taking it off)
its definetly overheating tho
no pinging or lose of power

could it be a head gasket with no white smoke or missfires or lose of coolant (except when it shoots everywhere)

 

Could br trapped air.

A mechanic I know does the following; when it's cold, he takes off the radiator cap and then runs it until it warms up. It'll gurgle from the trapped air. It'll pour out coolant. Keeps an eye on it and adds coolant until it levels out. .

Dumb question; is the t-stat properly postioned.

Sometimes people will accidentally install the t-stat backwards.

Maybe a defective t-stat.

Like Neb86 said; take a look at the bottom of the oil fill cap and see if it's brown, or check the oil dipstick.

If it is brown, could be water and oil mixing together, which could be as simple as a bad head gasket, to a a bad block.

 

Try running the engine, starting from cold, with the radiator cap off. See if it starts gushing coolant out right away. If it starts pushing out coolant before it's even hot that would indicate combustion leaking into the cooling system. (Like a head gasket or cracked head.) It is possible for combustion to escape into the cooling system via a bad head gasket without having oil in the coolant and without having coolant in the oil.

Clear up a couple of points: Does the car have a coolant recovery system, or are you having to add coolant every time you use the car? Is the car unusable at this point?

 

Bdox, If there was combustion in the coolanr, wouldn't there be coolant in the cylinder?

Hmmmm!. Maybe not. I don't know.

Hey oojbearoo, is there any white smoke coming out of the tailpipe?

Dang Chevys.

Fords don't do this.

Well, maybe not as much.

 

Couple of things here- never pull the radiator cap off when the engine's warm on a sealed cooling system- which is what that car has. The systems pressurized- just like a pressure cooker. Worse, it sucks air into the system when it cools down- which may be the cause of the problem. Overflow cap is the only thing that's supposed to come off on a warm motor, or it'll spit coolant everywhere (that part's normal).

A few things to check:
1) When it's cold, take the cap off and check the coolant level- both what's inside the radiator and what's in the overflow tank. When cold, the radiator level should be full, and the overflow about two inches under the "check hot" line.

Rock the car back and forth, see if any air bubbles surface. Is there oil in the coolant? It sounds like an air bubble in the system (which would really suck, because all the parts changing may have been unnecessary).

Check the line from the overflow tank to the radiator. Sometimes they kink up- coolant doesn't return to the engine, creating a vacuum.

Wife's Riviera did the same thing- turned out to be air in the coolant system.

 

[QUOTE=sierraben]Bdox, If there was combustion in the coolanr, wouldn't there be coolant in the cylinder?

I don't know how many hundred head gaskets I've changed, but I have become pretty good at 'reading' them. They can leak any number of ways.
The greatest pressure is in the cylinder and it will take advantage of any weakness to get out.

Also on the intake stroke a bad gasket can suck in coolant or oil too. Just depends on where the failure occurs in the gasket.

Polarbear is right. Only remove the cap when the engine is cold, or cool. Run the engine from cold with the cap off and there should be no pressure. There is a little expansion from heat but if it is a head gasket leaking combustion into the cooling jackets, the gasses will displace the coolant and push it out any available opening. To do this simple test, better to have the cap off so it does not become pressurized. If coolant starts gushing out that's your problem, but it only works if it's really bad. It is not foolproof, the best way to check is by using an exhaust analyzer to 'sniff' the air space in the cooling system. Lacking a sniffer, a "Block Check" is equally good. That is a chemical tester that is sold in better parts stores.

 

If it is, in fact, an '85 2.5 liter Celebrity, the t-stat should be under a radiator-cap-looking-thing on the driver's side of the engine (some engineer probably got fired for making it this easy). If you fill the engine with coolant with the t-stat out, you shouldn't have an air bubble behind it. Put the t-stat in, continue filling until it wont take anymore. Put the radiator-cap-looking-thing back on.

The radiator has a cap but it is angled back wards at around 45*(some engineer probably got a raise for that one). Is that the pressure relief you are talking about? If that is bad it wont let excess coolant out to the overflow or, when it cools down, coolant back into the radiator. You can top off the cooling system there but, use a funnel or you'll spill as much anti-freeze as you get in.

No white smoke, no misfire and no coolant loss would seem like the head gasket is OK. HOWEVER... I've worked on enough of those engines to know that anything's possible! The gasket could have such a small leak that it wouldn't pull enough coolant in on the intake stroke to see white smoke in the exhaust. Nor would it be enough to cause a noticeable misfire. But it will add pressure to the system with every compression stroke.

Come on back and let us know what you find!

 

I totally forgot that the t-stat was unusually long.

It's been a long time since my GM partsman days.

 

And I dang near forgot about the 2.5 Celebrities.