05g5

this may get long, but bare with me a little please.
05 l61 170k kms n/a

i do have a couple other threads out there, but scrap them, im a lot futher into it now and even more confused.

story goes like this.

my car was taking forever to heat up in the mornings, ok thats simple. replace t-stat. and the tstat was shot, rubber was rotten and fucked basically.

EVER since then i cannot get coolant to flow. Ive tried everything, EVERYTHING.
Ive since the new stat, i replaced the water pump, took off entire timing chain cover, replaced balance shaft tension ( was sticking aswell ), everything went well. put it all back together. Took off tstat housing to inspect. I can physically blow air through the rad ( via top and bottom rad hose ) I can physically blow air through the motor and heater core with ease as well. So no blocks. yet still no flow.

HOWEVER. when trying to bleed the system, the top rad hose gets HOT, the botom rad hose and heater core hoses stay cold. If i put the surge tank cap on the coolant lines will build A LOT of pressure in say, 5 minutes time. to the point i shut the car off so i dont blow a line off. Still only the top rad hose gets hot this whole time. Also when bleeding the system, if i squeeze the hoses, i can almost on Q re-creat this slapping noise thats happening inside my rad. it sounds like its smacking and it moves from left to right, and right to left ( back n forth ). The over flow tank ( cap off ) will fill right up and overflow coolant WHEN the car is running, but when i shut it off, it sucks all the coolant back in the tank into the motor, so i add more, start up - it spills out again.

It will take 20-30 minutes got the temp gauage to read its hot or over heating becuase the sensor is in the tstat housing, meanwhile the top rad hose is boiling coolant.

I have no coolant in my oil, i cannot see coolant on the pistons when i look down them with a light, also dont think the smoke comming out the tail pipe is abnormal, seeing as its cold out side - has no smell, color etc. BUT i do notice which may be an abnormal amount of what looks like steam comming out of the surge tank - possibly exhaust?

every burping method in the book has been attempted, i got different people to give their ideas.

im stuck with either, and this is what i believe :
a rad that wont for what ever reason pass coolant
or a blown head gasket and im leaking compressed air into the system.

how would this happen? when i first did my tstat origially, i put it all together, started car, added coolant, looked around didnt see any leaks, so i went and had a beer, came back a few minutes later, turned heat on and was cold. wtf? look at temp, 112 or so degree C. So i shut it off and havent got anywhere since, house upon hours of ******* with things and taking them apart.

In that sense, i also belive that there wont be any other serious damage to anything seeing as it wasnt abused like tis for weeks/months like some. Ive never gone this far to tear a motor right apart, so there will be some learning involved, but i love figuring **** out, so ill do the job my self. tools and a higher than avg mechanical knowledge are on my side. still just a lot of work, but heh this car is important to m & i need it

05g5

would a compression test answer my question? if its the head gasket?

oh yea, car does not misfirie, sputter or do anything els out of the ordinary, sounds and runs as good as ever. just cant drive it... lol

tomj77

iTrader: (2)

I'd there oil in coolent? If u got no oil in coolent or coolent in oil I don't think ur head gasket is the issue. Maybe ur rad is plugged somehow.

ItalianJoe1

iTrader: (10)

Did you try a different t-stat?

YelloEye

iTrader: (3)

Did you burp the system? Might be a bunch of air in the system which screws with it flowing.

slvrred-

iTrader: (2)

its either really air bound like yellow eye said or the new t stat is no good and not letting the system flow. try letting it get up to temp and shutting it off so it some what heat soaks to try and open the t stat that way. then again if its bad it won't ever open.....

05g5

i bougt no name tstat, no flow, so i went to the dealer ship and they confirmed there was no coolant flow, and said tstat or water pump was bad, so i bought both oem tstat and water pump off them. AND tested the tstat, it works.

no coolant in oil, or oil in coolant, or coolant in the cylinders ( that i can see )

But what could be happening is, compressed air from the cylinders is leaking into the cooling system - head gasket

and as i said in first post, i tried EVERYTHING, flat ground, lift front end up, lift only surge tank side, im like 95% sure theres no air, UNLESS the rad wont allow coolant to flow. ( burping )

please read all of my first post, all this was said in there one way or another

05g5

everything as far as i can tell works

tstat opens up in boiling pot of water
i took the drain plug off the water pump when the car was running, coolant poured out. PUSHED OUT, so no doubt that pump is turning how it should

i burped the system every way possible.
its just not flowing

ECaulk

iTrader: (6)

You probably have a block in the system. Can you get it to gravity flow fluid through the radiator?

05g5

i can blow throug the rad hoses.. both top and bottom and push coolant out and through the motor, i tried.



today i also drained the cooling system though the drain plug in the rad.
but im still not conviced the rad is working fine, it could stilll be gummed up, just cause air can pass doesnt mean water can? right? i mean it takes a long time to get hot.

slvrred-

iTrader: (2)

I read your first post. I'm trying to help so there is no reason to get impatient......internet daig is not the easiest to do.

With that said. If you have a leaking headgasket that you think is only leaking compression they make testers for that. What temp does the car get up to? Also, another thing to think of if it is leaking compression into the cooling system it would over pressurize the hoses and you would be blowing hoses off and all sorts of wrose stuff

05g5

i mean, from someone els point of view, and if any of you were to come look at the car. it seems like the coolant is not passing throug the thermostat... its being pushed TO the thermostat, just not passing it. so it seems, but that tstat is working. i tested it, its in there correctly 100%.

the fact that it builds so much pressure so fast is what makes me think head gasket

05g5

i know i know, sorry.

if i was to let it run for 30 min or so with the surge tank cap on, i probably would blow a hose. someting would let go. like i said, it builds pressure, i know when things heat up in a confied space they creat pressure, but this seems like a little much to me.


with the surge tank cap off and the heat on full blast it wont go above 80 C, with the surge tank cap off and no heat it will go to 100 or so. anything with the cap on will get HOT and HARD lines

slvrred-

iTrader: (2)

Me personally, it took a while for the car to burp all the air. I would let the car get to 220* and shut it off with the cap off the res. I would do that a few times and let it go back down to like 150* before restarted

copson20

Pull the radiator and see if it fills up.

05g5

first thing im going to do tomorrow

go rent a compression test tool, what ever the **** it is i need.
if that checks out ok

take it to the shop down the street, i got his opinion on my car earlier today. he said he had a hell of a time with a air lock with a 06 2.2 . he gave me some pointers, but i think ill just give it to him to screw with.

you guys dont seem to hell bent on the idea of a headgasket gone, and after doing some googling its not a common thing with our cars.

05g5

the whole rad slapping thing today was the first ive heard it, it was pretty loud, definatly there. and like a slap, 1 2 3 4. i would squeeze the **** out of the hoses again, and 3 seconds later, smack smack smack again from the rad. wierd, but it was there

slvrred-

iTrader: (2)

Yes headgaskets aren't common unless you run stupid boost or just give up on taking care of the car. When I changed the coolant in my 09 SS it took like a solid 45mins to bleed.

ECaulk

iTrader: (6)

Normal signs of head gasket issues, oil in coolant, coolant in oil. If it worked fine before the tstat replacement (and you didn't remove the head) the gasket shouldn't magically block coolant from flowing. Def sounds like you still have an air lock

05g5

It doesnt make any sense god damnit.


Ok

top rad hose gets hot
that line flows into the water pump, which is working
the water pump pushs coolant to the tstat, which is working
coolant is then suppose to flow into te heater core - I dont have heat.... - lines thay cold
then the T- fitting, bottom rad hose and surge tank are connected to - lines stay cold
then through the rad, and repeat

theres not a lot of room for error here. if it wasnt drawing coolant from the rad properly wouldnt the bottom rad hose still get a little warm? it should still have some push INTO the rad.


im so beyond frustrated i cant even make sense of **** anymore. lol my bad, but you all know wat i mean

YelloEye

iTrader: (3)

No heat means fluid isn't flowing or there's air in the system. The best way to bleed the system is to disconnect the metal coolant overflow pipe right over the intake manifold on the drivers side, use an air compressor to apply pressure towards the overflow tank while holding the metal tube into a small overflow soda bottle. You should be applying enough air to pressurize the system but not to trigger the overflow cap.

05g5

what eventually worked for you?

what did you do? jack just the surge tank side up? run it, revs? squeeze lines? run heat wide up, part way or off? etc?

05g5

also think im going to try the old, drill a small hole in the tstat, i think that might help me enough to push this fkin air out. as long as my compression test comes back good

YelloEye

iTrader: (3)

drilling a hole in it is going to increase your warmup time again. I really think the problem is air in the system.

slvrred-

iTrader: (2)

What I did was what I mentioned already. Run car. coolant cap off. Wait till about 220* on the DIC. Shut car off and then turn key back on with engine off and wait for it to cool down to 150-170ish. Repeat for a few times. after a few repeats of that you can rev and try to turn heat up to full blast. car on level ground btw