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- Path: sparky!uunet!ogicse!uwm.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!claudius!tcora
- From: tcora@PICA.ARMY.MIL (Tom Coradeschi <tcora>)
- Newsgroups: rec.autos.tech
- Subject: Re: overheating
- Message-ID: <1992Sep3.164703.19189@pica.army.mil>
- Date: 3 Sep 92 16:47:03 GMT
- Article-I.D.: pica.1992Sep3.164703.19189
- References: <715391625.856.0@hector.mercury.acs.cmu.edu>
- Sender: news@pica.army.mil (USENET Special Account <usenet>)
- Organization: Electric Armts Div, US Army ARDEC, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ
- Lines: 27
- Nntp-Posting-Host: claudius
-
- kz08+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ken Zuroski) writes:
- >I have a Ford '86 F150 pickup. My wife was driving it today, and she did
- >not notice that the temperature gauge was creeping up. As she pulled into
- >our driveway (luckily then), the engine died and boiled over. I opened the
- >hood and looked inside--no coolant left in the radiator; oil level looked
- >good. I replaced the water/coolant mixture and cranked the engine again. It
- >started with no problem and seems to be running well.
- >
- >I suspect a leak in the cooling system, and figure that the coolant simply
- >ran dry. There is one other sympton that is confusing me, however. Now even
- >with a full radiator, whenever the truck is idling and I turn on the heater,
- >the air coming out of the heater remains cool until I rev the engine a bit--
- >then it heats up momentarily and then gets cool again. This is not the same
- >response that I remember before the engine boiled over. Then, the heater seemed
- >to heat up quickly even at idle and gave good constant heat output.
-
- Check the coolant level. It's quite likely that you didn't fill it up
- all the way. Run the engine until the thermostat opens (you will see
- the coolant level drop in the radiator), then top it off. If the level
- is sufficiently low, you will experience what you note re: intermittent
- heater operation, since there isn't enough fluid in the system to get
- good flow thru the heater (or to cool the engine, for that matter).
-
- Let us know what happens...
- --
-
- tom coradeschi <+> tcora@pica.army.mil
-