Well, here's the tale:
I drove from my house in Newnan, GA (Suburb of Atlanta) to Hollywood,FL
to visit family for the holiday weekend. This is about a 675 mile
trip.On the way down there, I found out I have a cooling problem.
The truck has never overheated before. I drove it all the way down to my
second fuel stop, which was at the Okahumpa Service Plaza on the
turnpike. This is the first Plaza as you are going South on the
turnpike. I always keep one eye on the guages and never saw anything on
the temp that said it was fluctuating or anything.I filled up and left
the plaza, and about 5 minutes down the road, the damn thing starts to
heat very quickly, to the eventual point of the "Check Guages" light
coming on and it pushing 240 on the scale. I pulled over and turned it
off, and I raised the hood. When I looked under the hood, I found that
my overflow bottle was boiling over. I also found that the upper hose,
as well as the bottom, was very tight and very hot. I then found that
the radiator cap and the radiator itself were cold to the touch. This
told me that the coolant was not circulating, and because I had
installed a NAPA 180 stat, it must have been that. So I let it sit for a
minute, and then started it up, and after initially starting to heat up
again, it finally opened up and cooled off back down to normal for the
180 stat. It stayed normal the rest of the trip, until I hit the
toll-booth and as I sat in line, the temp started to creep up again. I
turned on the heat wide open. After that it cooled off again. I made it
to my nephew's house in Hollywood and immediatly got a new NAPA 180 stat
and put it in. I drove the truck pretty hard ovr the next couple of days
trying to get it to heat up again, but it seemed fine. I leave Hollywood
on Tuesday afternoon and took I-95 North to Ft.Pierce to jump on the
Turnpike. I stopped for gas in Ft.Pierce. and damn if it didn't do it
again! It started boiling over after I cut it off, the hoses were hot
and tight,and the radiator was cool to the touch. I let it cool for
about 20 minutes, then jumped in it and went. It started heating up
again as I got on the turnpike, but all of the sudden, just as before,
it would cool down rapidly to normal. The truck contiued to do this
every time I stopped the engine for gas, or anything else.
Here is what I figure:
There is definitely some type of blockage in either the block or the
radiator. From what I do not know, but I did just have that Belly Pan
Gasket fixed recently. Whatchya wanna bet that when they did that that
some crap went down into one of the cooling passages and is jammed up
somewhere ? This would explain the situation. As the truck heats up, it
finally builds up a *LOT* of pressure as it approaches the 260 mark, and
that pressure pushes past the blockage. Whenever I stop the truck and
the flow stops, it allows the blockage to re-seat itself, and the cycle
starts again.
Also, it doesn't do this riving around town or back and forth to work.
Jack
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