V6 1997 Overheating

[snapper]

I thought i would give people the benefit of the solution to my overheating problem.

 

I approched it from an advise point of view and not from experience and common sense, the advise was good and proper but i went about the solutions from the expensive way first.

 

AA man said "probably the waterpump, it has a plastic impellor that breaks off"

 

The V6 has a metal impellor and rairly fails.... that said the bearings were a bit notchy after 140,000

 

So i replaced that first.

 

The car boiled over in 7 miles.

Next try thermostat

 

Advise on this site for which i am greatfull for said that the thermostat housing should be checked for cracks, so i took the front left of the car apart just to get anyware near it, i still needed mirrors and lots of extention bars to get to the last bolt.

 

Then took the housing apart and replaced all the O rings and any other part i could buy (i was not going to do this again in a hurry)

Now i have to put it all back

 

Total time for this, as i have not worked on the car to this level before... 4 days..

 

20 mile drive and no problems so far.. we will see trommorow

 

 

 

Now to my conclusions...

 

V6 overheats.....

Cheack thermostat,just remove the 3 bolts off the housing boil in wifes best pan and observe thermostat, you should see it open befor the water boils vigerously, if no movement then replace thermostat and O ring, torque nuts to 7 ft/lb or about 0.9Kg/M.

 

If it still boils, get it gas checked for head gasket, if this is negative then you may have a water pump problem but i would think that you would hear the aux belt screaming if the pump was stalling.

 

Just my opinion but after 4 days chasing this problem, i fell pretty stupid finding out that if i had just replaced the thermostat and O ring the whole job would have been complete in and hour .