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Hello all,
I recently had to replace my vehicle’s power steering pump (1996 Buick Roadmaster, V8 5.7l) and I had to remove the heater hoses to get to it. I’ve done cooling system work before on my vehicle and followed the bleeding procedure in the Haynes manual. I did the same as before, but now I have intermittent heat and the engine temp stays down to pinging the bottom of the scale even after warming up. There’s no CEL or any other odd things happening.
The Hayne’s process is just to open the bleed screw and refill, then close it when the bleeder is flowing. Should that work for this system? This question arises because my system doesn’t have a radiator cap, just the pressurized tank cap. Eric mentioned these types of systems in passing in the How to bleed video. 🙂
I’ve attached a photo of the (I think) relevant bits.
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I decided to go ahead and try to adapt Eric’s procedure to my cooling system. This made my heat come back. 🙂
- Removed the tank cap and started the engine. Let it run for about 10 minutes.
- I watched for bubbles coming up in the tank and had to add a little coolant. It has a fill line that I used.
- Everything else was the same. Heat on, fan low, etc.
Here’s a couple of things that I noticed, and all I can say is I’m glad it’s cold outside this time of year because I think this would be a problem in the summer.
- While idling, the engine will warm up and even overheat. This takes a long time – probably at least 10 minutes of idling. The primary cooling fan doesn’t kick on. If I turn on the heater, the secondary fan kicks on and cools everything quickly.
- While driving, the engine temp stays at the bottom of the scale. My normal driving doesn’t have me idling more than a few seconds at a time so I never noticed the overheating bit above.
I think I need to test the fan circuit but it’s dark outside which is where I work. I’ll do this tomorrow. Am I looking at the right stuff here?
Thanks very much for your tips and for keeping us up to date. I should do a video just on bleeding an expansion tank system to address these questions.
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