dtewing

Fist off - thank you ALL for your time posting helping me troubleshoot this issue. Much appreciated. And for ALL you who did post and are Dad's : "Happy Father's Day" !

So I believe I found the culprit - I flashed a light into the valley of the engine block and I see fresh coolant. I am getting a part number on Rock auto for the o-rings right now for the front coolant pipe and with remove the TB and reseat the front coolant pipe and replace the o-rings. Hopefully that will solve this once and for all. IF it is the rear coolant pipe it may have to wait until I have more time to dedicate.

At any rate - much appreciate the assistance - it helped me as I thought thru this process...

Cheers, Darren

jaaa

The reason I asked you to check the valley of the engine for coolant is because you said this started about the time you replaced the starter. My problems began when I replaced the starter too. I actually heard a snap sound (it was the sound of the gasket breaking-inside the water pump- from the water tube that runs the length of the valley of the engine) when I was horsing around with the coolant hoses up at the bulkhead side of the engine while I was taking out the intakes to replace the starter. I figured out that the gasket needed replacing, but it took two tries to pull out the intakes and clean out the water pump(some parts of the gasket actually weld to the inside of the water pump hole)) good enough to get the leak to stop. Had I been smart at all, I should have just replaced the water pump once and been done with it, but this engine was new to me at the time and I plead total ignorance. So if you haven't replaced the water pump yet, I'd just do that. Should solve your leak.

dtewing

So I wanted to circle back and report on what I believe to be the END of my saga with her overheating.

I had the o-ring on the coolant pipe that had failed after the starter replacement - I replaced the o-ring. Still overheating So I ran a block test on her - ZERO exhaust gases escaping into the reservoir. So I pressure tested her (mind you this is all work in progress for a hack like me to figure out) found that the new stant reservoir cap was a dud, a couple of hoses needed to be replace, etc. After that I ran another pressure test - HOLDING pressure.

So I warmed her up and still overheating. The radiator was strange at the top though as the NSF radiator part was hot and part was cold. I had checked her before just pulling the upper and lower radiator hose and running a hose through her and it seemed no blockages

Anyway trying to keep this brief, their must have been some sort of blockage in the radiator so I went to Rock Auto got the Denso part number and then searched Amazon and they had one in stock. Swapped the radiator ran a pressure test all good. I have been driving her for several days now with NO overheating. The gauge gets out of the normal range but goes down, so I may try a bleed procedure again, but NO overheating at this time...

I want to thank the folks on this forum who came to my rescue. I learned a lot about cooling an engine and repair procedures. And that is the point. I may have spent a little more on swapping parts and such, but mostly that is routine maintenance on a 17 y.o. beauty...

Thanks again, Darren

Granite88

I kept thinking as I read over the thread that the one thing you never checked was the radiator. Glad to hear it was a mostly simple fix between a leaking o-ring and a radiator.
Reminds me, I need to blow some grass and road dirt away from my own radiator/condenser. Its cooled perfectly within range- just dirty.

dtewing

Always fun to finally fix an issue. Although sometimes it seemed as though I was going to loose and she seemed more like a stubborn Irish gal, than the sweet California girl she is now. (Apologies to those of us with Irish backgrounds).

So after dealing with the original coolant loss issue in the o-ring of the coolant pipe. I still had serious air in the system and was experiencing overheating. I am still astonished all the times it did overheat (mostly due to being somewhere I had to go/return from and unavoidably couldn't just stop the car) and the head gasket never blew.

In the end I replaced a lot of coolant parts (most if not all needed them) and attempted to bleed the air out of the system using the instructions on the reservoir cap and on the forums here. Apparently, I had the mother off all air pockets as they didn't work.

So I went to Amazon and bought a Lisle 24680 Spill-Free Funnel and was able to purge the air out of the system SUCCESSFULLY. I have driven her many miles in city/highway and such and she holds steady on the temp gauge and the coolant has stayed level and the car operates normally...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A6AS6LY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Here is the Lisle link : http://www.lislecorp.com/divisions/p...s/?product=606 I was able to use one of the adapters supplies for my 1999 LS400. I think I bought it off Amazon on a warehouse deal for around $20. Worth every penny to solve my issue !!

Cheers, Darren