It's a long story... but I got stuck in a traffic jam yesterday. My temps never go above 90-91 deg c on the hottest of days, in the worst traffic. But yesterday after hardly moving for 20 minutes (but moving enough not to be able to shut off the car), they went to about 100 deg c for about 15 miutes in the traffic, so I figured that as long as it's stable, I'm o.k. All the sudden my pfc starts clmbing to 105 and I start to freak out. I rev the engine a bit to get the coolant flowing and my coolant buzzer goes off (oh **** ). Within seconds (literaly) the temps shot to 155 . The stock gauge even jumped to the 11 o'clock position.

In the end, I was stuck on the worst possible part of the thruway (for those who know, 676 in center city philly) 15 ft from a 3 ft deep flood (which caused the traffic jam in the first place) in torrential rain for about 3 hours. It was a real good time all around


I'm pretty sure that this means rebuild time, right??

-Matt

 

311? Holy ******* ****!!!!!!!!!!
That is NOT, I repeat NOT, good at all.

 

My sincere condolences.

 

moehler,

You won't really know for sure until you start doing the normal "coolant tests".

 

I suggest you start with the shampagne test as described in scuderia scirianis site, but to be honest the prognostics are not good.
Good luck and let us know what happens.

 

I don't understand how it rose so fast? I've watched mine go from 100-112 at the mechanics when we were playing around and that took about 2 minutes and I shut it down at 112. I bet one of your fan relays broke and the fans didn't come on. Then the coolant burst out of the overflow tank because of the extreme heat causing your low coolant light to come on. You're engine isn't toast for sure but you need to figure out the problem in the coolant system that caused this.
Oh and **** the traffic if your car is overheating pull over and shut it off right away or just do it on the spot if its getting above 110 ish there's something wrong. I'm guessing you have the fan mod setup differently? Cause I **** if I see anything over the 80s with it...

 

Yeah... the only explaination is that I somehow lost a ton of coolant. It was dark and raining hard as hell, so I couldn't tell where it leaked from. I had a 1/4 gallon of coolant in my trunk and I poured it in and it didn't come close to filling it up. It was raining so hard that it could have been pouring right out as soon as I filled it up and I would not have been able to tell.

My fans were working fine, and I have the fan mod.

My mechanic is taking a look at it now since I towed it straight to him... hopefully by the end of the day I'll now why it overheated, or at least if the engine is o.k. (which I think it's not...).

 

I'm no expert, but coolant can't spike 50°C in such a short time that you can't react. There must be something else that caused the momentary high 'temperature'. So it's very possible the highest valid reading was only 105, nothing scary. How quickly are we talking for this temp spike?

I would drain, refill, and inspect the system. Burp it like it's your job.

Still, have a compression test done if you're worried, and do a coolant pressure test too.

Dave

 

sounds like a hose burst or your thermostat failed...can't be anything else right?

where were you filling it up from? Did you see steam or a shitload pressure coming from the overflow tank?

 

well, it was about 15 or 20 seconds at most from when it was 105 to 155. it's hard to explain the scenario, but in the mist of all the traffic I came up to a 3 ft flood , and froze as cars were trying to 'gun' it through the water (about 10 cars stalled in the water). This happens, of course, right when my water temp hit 105. Coolant buzzer starts going off and I need a place to pull the car to shut it down, so I pulled over as close as i could to the wall as there was no shoulder on this road. This took about 15 oor 20 seconds and by that time I hit 155.

Really, it was the worst possible scenario for an overheating seven.

 

no steam whatsoever, nothing in the overflow tank. I filled it from the filler neck. it was totally crazy...

the best part about it is that I just topped the coolant off that morning, so I know it was full. Since I was curious why it was low (I only topped it off with at most a 1/2 cup), when I got to work I checked again to see that it was still full. It was, so I figured it was safe. and that I had no serious problem.

 

Well I think that rules out the thermostat or that you already had started seeing o ring failure with coolant going into the engine. Usually you'de see really crazy steam with pressure coming out of the overflow.

This is pretty simple there's a nice sized hole in either a turbo coolant line or radiator hose or something completely fell off of a nipple etc. My mechanic told me once about the metal hardline on the turbos that he had seen rust and then it could just fall off one day while driving that's possible as well.

 

Let's hope for the best. Let us know what the champane tests reveal. Maybe you dodged the bullet...

 

but doesnt it seem a bit odd that it jumped from 105 to 155 in a matter of seconds?

i mean an oven doesnt even heat up that fast lol

 

Were you in the water when it happened? It is a long shot, but the hot engine hitting the cold water may have caused the problem. It does sound like you have a torn hose someplace if it rose that fast and the coolant buzzer went off.

 

Dont feel bad when I was on the highway running my FC pretty hard 100+ miles per hr. my hose went out and I lost all antifreeze. I pulled off and shut down right away, fixed the hose later and replaced the theromostat. And the car ran fine.The temp. gadge was pinned overheating.

 

I hate threads like these... Makes me never want to drive my car

 

if the engine is really hot to begin with and it looses all coolant, I think the temps will fly up. There's no other way to explain it... that just what happened. I was shocked.

nope... I stoped a few feet before the flood.



yeah, I agree . This is the first time in 2 years of daily driving the seven to work I've question getting another car.

 

Don't everyone get their panties in a wad until it's confirmed the car did in fact suffer damage.

You obviously had some sort of failure in the cooling system and dumped coolant out. Just becuase it got that hot for that brief moment does not mean automatic engine damage. It may be alright, it may not. No need for any heartache until the leak is found and fixed and the system pressure tested.

 

With 15 psi cap, 50/50 egw starts to vaporize at 265F. With flow problems and air pockets, the vapor could be superheated near combustion chambers and/or exh ports, and blasted thru the t-stat at near 300F.

I finally lost a dying engine in a similar way .... made it 140 miles back from a track day, and lost it a few miles from home. Happended quickly.

 

OK, that's interesting to see those stats. 20-30s is a little longer than 'instant', but still very fast. And it was just his luck to be in another very critical situation which was taking his attention.

Right now I just have dummy Autometer water temp gauge. Do the better ones come with audible buzzers that you can configure?

Dave

 

She survived . After the problem was solved, the car held 13 lbs of pressure (16 psi caps on it) for a long while and a solid 87 deg c water temp for 20 minutes of idling.

So what went wrong???

When my mechanic presure tested the system, the ast cap (only 6 months old) blew out coolant at under 4 psi

Moral of the story... whenever you get bored, replace your radiator and ast cap... it may save your *** .

-Matt

 

Man you got you got lucky, glad it all worked out in the end.











Sorry couldn't help myself No but seriously congrats!

 

lmao... why the hell would you rev the engine... thats not gonna do anything but make your temps get higher... theres no air flowing through the radiator so its not going to do much by revving....

 

Ummm... two reasons.

1) To help flow the coolant through the system faster, thus helping the car cool down.
2) If there was an air buble or something that caused the temps to rise (so that the coolant sensor was in the "open" air), slightly reving the engine will help move coolant back over the senor giving me more accurate temp readings.

It's not like I cranked it to 8k or something, just around 3k.