OK NOT TO GO THOUGHT A LONG STORY BUT I’VE BEEN HAVING COOLIN PROBLEMS SINCE I HAD THE FI INSTALLED… I REPLACED EVERYTHING (TURBO, ENGINE, ETC) AND THE PROBLEM WHERE HAVING IS MY OVERFLOW TANK IS SPILLING OVER WHEN U BEAT ON IT AND NO THE TEMP GAUGE ISN’T MOVING AND THAT WAS ALSO BACKED UP ON THE CROME SOFTWARE…
SO THE ONLY THINGS THAT HAVEN’T BEEN TOUCHED WOULD BE THE THERMSAT… AND THE INTERCOOLER…
MY QUESTION IS DO U GUYS THINK I’M NOT GETTING ENOUGH AIR TO MY FMIC
this pic is from about a year ago it is exact of what you’ll see
FMIC has nothing to do with it. You either have air bubbles, a line problem, or a thermostat problem. Drain you shit and refill it the right way, with a new thermo + gasket. Should solve everything.
dude the engine was just replaced…it’s still in the damn shop for cryin out loud and i’m doing the work xenocron is doing it so i’m sure he coved them bases…if it’s the thermo i’ll know by tomorrow since he replaced it today…i don’t know what it could be and neither does he… i just tryin to get a lil feed back but thanks for the advice but i’m sure he’s done that
In saying that you’ve replaced the engine, do you mean that you just got another engine and put it in, or did you rebuild an engine? From what I have seen and experienced, pushing coolant like that without overheating is usually a sign of a bad headgasket. It definitely has nothing to do with your intercooler though.
This could be several things. The first thing that jumps up and down and screams “pick me! pick me!” is are you sure you don’t have a blown head gasket? How is the water level in the radiator? Are you having to add water frequently to the radiator? What do a compression and leak-down tests look like? It could be that you have a small leak that isn’t revealing itself until you get enough heat in the engine to expand the head/block to give water a way out. I could be an airflow problem. What radiator are you running? What fan? Do you have an engine bay picture? The positioning of the intercooler in our cars does tend to block airflow to the upper part of the radiator. You could still have some really bad air bubbles in the system. Try running the car with the front/rear of the car jacked up and opening up the coolant bleed screw to persuade them out.
It is also very possible that when you “beat on it” that the pressure in the cylinders is causing the head to lift and stuff is getting by the headgasket. It would explain having a good pressure / leakdown in the cylinders but still eating stuff.
I ended up running a new headgasket, but putting ARP headstuds on it - others have had the same issue, and this seemed to solve it. Stock headbolts just stretch too much under the well beyond stock cylinder pressures from FI.
Also, your FMIC looks to be in a good place. You got plenty of clearance around it, so the radiator can get air to it fine. What kind of fan are you running on the rad? If it isn’t the stock rad fan, or some 12-14" aftermarket one w/ a high CFM output, you could also have this issue. Are you running a half rad? If a half rad, and not the dual core from a Civic Si / Del Sol, consider getting one. radiatorbarn.com has them for $95 shipped.
yea i just spoke with him and he said he still thinks my fmic has something to do with it… but it’s raining so i can’t do a pull to see for myself…thanks for the advice guys
BLOWN HEADGASKET. boost pressure bleeds past the gasket pressurizing the coolant passages, thus blowing all the coolant out the overflow can. Seen this a MILLION TIMES with turbo honduhs. :idea:
Its not a headgasket…EVERYTHING was replaced…including the motor and the symptoms are exactly the same.
Two key points:
There is little to ANY gap to allow fresh, cool air through and into the radiator. There are TWO fans on this radiator, one pushes the other pulls. Whether the fans are wired on 100% of the time or if the radiator fan switch is allowed to operate normally makes no difference…symptoms are the same.
This is an Ebay special rad. Core is not terribly thick. Fluid comes out of the overflow regardless of if you beat on it or not. The headgasket is FINE, compression test proves that.
The car DOES not overheat…it just pushes coolant out into the overflow reservoir (and overflows it) until it has pushed a certain amount out. After that, temp still stays steady, and no more coolant comes out. When the car cools completely, the radiator level is down about an 1" (this worries me) and sometimes this affects whether the heat is hot or not (level of the cooling system will affect whether warm coolant gets to the heater core or not).
I didnt see anybody suggest the radiator cap. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Is that not what controls what goes to the overflow and what doesn’t? I can’t imagine you replaced everything and kept the same rad cap. I remember the TOP STREET shop car (well over 500hp), a dsm, kept overflowing the overflow reservoir, and the guy driving said “my radiator cap is bad and keeps allowing the coolant to go to the overflow.”
Mine exactly does that. It overflowed once and I removed some coolant to keep at the Max level.
That did not solve it. So I bled off some coolant from the bleed bolt for like 15 minutes and at the same time squeezing the life out of the rad hoses.
This solved the problem somewhat. Now when the engine is cold the level on the reservoir is at MIN and after driving hard it reaches the MAX level. Once it cools down like the next day it goes back to the MIN level.
yea the cap has been replaced…i’m going to go with a better IC and see whats that does…
o yea…very lil coolant overflows anymore…i haven’t seen any in about a week…i’ve ran the car @ the track twice (my best was 14.9 @ 104) and damn near nothing overflowed…so i’ll see what happens the next day it gets over 80 deg.
Hahaha! Lame! I got the same problem, almost now…the only thing we have in common in our setups is Chris lol. Anyways, my shit does not overheat, no issues at all, jsut the tank keeps boiling over. I emptied it out, filled up the rad, and after an hours drive there was an inch of coolant in the reservoir…a day or two later it was full. So I fill up the rad again, and leave the reservoir full too…and its overflowin again. The only thing I can possibly think of is that there is something wrong with the coolant, or the rad cap. What coolant do you have? I have whatever Chris put in, and some water. No idea why it would matter.
I had the the same rad with the same problems, 2 years ago. It ended up being a blown headgasket. Drove around for 4-6 months, had perfect compression, then one day the gasket popped for good. I had the big SSautocracker FMIC. Now the rad is in a GSR sc61 hatch, with my old FMIC. He hasn’t had a problem, yet…
