QuestionI have a 99 cav, and recently I had the oil changed. The oil cap and water resevoir cap were virtually glued on! The next day, the car started overheating, bad (they replaced the water resevoir cap)they also did an engine flush. The fan is working, and there is hot air in the cabin when the heater is on, I can't figure out why the engine is over heating so badly, within five minutes, the temp gage is into the red zone. They don't call me a carkiller for no reason, I seem to kill every one I touch!
AnswerHi Carkiller,
Well, who did the work? A garage or a friend? Overheating is caused by pluggage (which should have been there before), collapsed hose, or bad thermostat.
I suspect the thermostat. They can go bad if they overheat only once. Strange why a car with no problems, suddenly overheats.
The reason I ask about the friend doing the work is because, I was wondering if the antifreeze could be wrong. A garage would have a better shot at this not happening, but it still could. Today's Chevys use a pink anti-freeze, and if the green one got mixed in, it causes a thick gel-like substance to be created out of your coolant.
Now that I think of it, this would make sense as to why the people flushed your system the next day. That doesn't make sense otherwise. This is just a theory, but they may have screwed up, and realized the next day. They flushed the system to attempt to rid it of the gel. It may not work. It may be in the heater core, radiator, head gasket, one or more of the many coolant channels in the motor, and gunked up in the thermostat. Just a thought. I hope I am wrong. If this did happen, it is very bad.
If they didn't remove the thermostat during the flushing of the motor, debris would have gotten jammed in the thermostat.
Find out if the pink/green thing happened. If not, change the thermostat for many reasons. It is a cheap thing to do, even if it just rules it out.
C J S
