Chevy Colorado cooling system marathon

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Hey every one I’m hoping to pick some brains if you have the time.

Last May we bought a 2006 Chevy Colorado with 118000 miles on it. It been a great truck and we love it however since we got it it has had cooling system problems. We first discovered this when we were traveling on i15 and the truck was running down the road at 225 degrees and not cooling off. Obviously that’s not a good thing.

So we started checking things out. We didn’t have a ton of money so we took it one thing at a time.

We started by removing the grille and spraying out the radiator. There was lots of mud and dirt and just other junk that came out.

We replaced the radiator cap next with a after market one but it didn’t seem to screw on very good so I went and got a oem radiator cap.

After that we replaced the With an electric one.

After that we replaced the thermostat with a 187 one.

Soon after that the water pump started leaking out of the weep hole and we thought for sure that was it and replaced it.

So after doing all these things the temperature does not fluctuate near as much as it did. Every time we opened the system we burped the system multiple times to make sure the air was out. It runs pretty much at 196-200 most anywhere that you are moving on flat ground

But now the issue is any time you go up a hill or incline the temperature climbs. On our way home for Christmas we had two bog mountain passes to climb. The first one we did it got to 219 and the second one was about the same, on the second one we turned the heater to full blast and it seemed to help but it still got to 213.

I think that it should run cooler than this especially considering that the outside air was only about 15 degrees. I used a infrared thermometer and checked the temperature sensor temp with the temp reported by the computer and it was within 3 degrees of what it was reporting. I also checked the temp of the radiator,

Inlet was 170
Outlet 70
Sensor reported 200

So my last thought is maybe the radiator is bad. It is the oem one and is 10 years old, I can’t see into the radiator very well but there is a few particles floating in the radiator. The coolant was replaced every time we drained it. But I don’t want to replace it without knowing if that’s the issue exactly. What do you guys think?

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Oh I forgot some important info. The truck does seem to heat up really fast. And the fan comes on at about 212 and off at 199.

I get the readings from my scan gauge

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