overheating issues

[White93z34]

well I have this car almost sorted out good enough to go to the trans shop save for one thing. it overheats.

I believe it has a Kenny hot tune chip in it, 160* t stat. Yes my fan works fine.

When I first got the car it had a 180 in it and it just always ran warm. on the drive home i was on the verge of overheating a few times.

I put the 160 from my black car in it, put the known good radiator fan in it. now my temps will stay between 168-170 while idling and I can let the car idle for hours and it will still stay there.

now the moment I start going down the road the temps start to creep up, I took it for a short drive and was pushing 210 by the time I got back. Let it idle some more and they eventually came back down.

my first impression is bad waterpump, but could a poorly performing radiator cause this? I know some of the 3.1s waterpumps on the market really suck with that impellar one a lot of places sell. could I have one of them?

my black tgp never overheated like this, it was a champ about it actually.

thanks
-chris

[Prospeeder]

thats not overheating, thats normal operating temp. Stock chip fans dont kick on till after 220. Hell the 3.1 in most cars will kick the fans on at 238. Your fine, its not going to run at 170 degrees under load

[Jonpro03]

I have a TG160 and I am almost always over 160*s in the summertime. Also, it kind of sounds like you have an air bubble in your coolant system.

[White93z34]

Eeeeh I dono. on my black TGP i could do almost anything and it would not really move the temp gauge. I also came *really* close to overheating on the day i drove it home. something is defiantly up.

[GutlessSupreme]

Does the car run strong? The only thing you notice happening is that the temp gauge gets close to the red zone?

[White93z34]

it runs fine... well as fine as it can with the trans slipping like a madman. Granted that may be causing it to warm up quicker but like I said i should not see the temp gauge jumping up as fast as it does. i drove the car for just a few miles and it went from 170 to 205 and took a good 10-15 minutes of idling with the fan running to bring it back down.

shortly here i'll be pulling the water pump, and if don't see anything obviously wrong with it i'm going to put the radiator from my black car in it.

[GutlessSupreme]

Well wait, just exactly how high is the temp gauge getting? You keep saying 'overheating,' but as it's been said, 205 is far from overheating. I'll also second that in my experience, whenever the temp gauge jumps that fast it's due to a bubble in the system, but I'm sure you're bleeding it...

no stream of bubbles visible in the overflow tank as it's running, right?

[killinprixs]

yea you can crack the coolant bleeders and start the car (cold) just make sure you shut them when coolant starts coming out!  That will ensure you dont have an air pocket.  If this was never done, then topped off, chances are cooling system is not going to function 100%,  then again its a TGP so knows whats really going on    GL

[White93z34]

I call overheating when I was driving it home and the temp gauge was well past 220. I call overheating when I had to sit on the side of the road idleing the car for a half hour for it to go below 220 again, twice I call overheating jumping from 170 to 210ish in a 5 minute drive.

Yes, I bled the cooling system out. No there was not any air in it.

Today I pulled the drain plug out of my full radiator nothing came out. I pulled the radiator from my parts car, put it in this car and on a near 100 degree day I could not make it go past 200 beating the crap out of the car. I pulled the waterpump but it was for nothing as it is fairly new and it was in perfect shape yet. Mystery solved.

[GutlessSupreme]

Sorry, I figured you could judge if it was actually overheating but you kept mentioning 210 so I wanted to be sure. Tough to gauge level of knowledge through forum posts lol.

So just a leaking radiator then?

[White93z34]

while this radiator did not leak i think it was all clogged up internally. when it was full i pulled the drainplug and nothing came out. I'll have a radiator shop check it out sometime. a TGP radiator is a terrible thing to let go to waste.

[killinprixs]

nice fix.  you better go out and thank that parts car

[mfewtrail]

while this radiator did not leak i think it was all clogged up internally. when it was full i pulled the drainplug and nothing came out. I'll have a radiator shop check it out sometime. a TGP radiator is a terrible thing to let go to waste.

That's a good idea to let a radiator shop deal with the old one. They should be able to get it like-new again or at least recore it for a reasonable price. I've ran across a few clogged radiators over the years, but they were usually on cars that people thought had blown head gaskets and used some sort of stop-leak in.