My temp gauge goes to about 3/4 H and then kicks back to center. I'm going to replace the thermostat this weekend but was curious about something.

When I get home at night I park in a garage. Last night I parked, went inside, then came back out 5 minutes later and noticed that there was a haze in the garage and the smell of coolant.

Any ideas on the haze? It wasn't like a lot of white smoke, but there was definitely something in the air.



Still sound like a sticking thermostat to you??

Sounds like there was a coolant leak, and the coolant evaporated off the hot engine.

could be steam from the overheated engine... being enclosed in doors in all. Don't keep driving that way man.

Check the radiator for small leaks. Mine just developed a tiny tiny leak and I have the same issue you have (Except my thermostat, mine rises fast and stays right below half, which in my history i've noticed that's high).

Leaking coolant evaporating off engine, or head gasket leak.

As said, more than likely it's just a coolant leak. The water pump tends to leak more after the engine is off, and running over all of the rather hot components, could just be boiling away.

More likely is a cracked filler neck on the radiator, they tend to spray directly at the exhaust manifold which would easily explain your 'haze'.

Check closely:

That just happened to me last week!!!! Had to replace the radiator. Piece of cake!!!!

Hah, I got a bottle of radiator stop-leak (2.79) and so far so good until I can afford $150 radiator from that group buy.

Looks like pmohr tried using it too... (My guess on the dirt on/around the radiator)

My radiator was about $120 from Advanced Auto Parts. I thought about the radiator sealer and using an epoxy on the crack, but since it's plastic, I didn't want to take a chance and get stranded.

That's just calcification from running tap water for so long.

90% of the time, a radiator 'fix' doesn't work at all, or ends up breaking down in short order. Plastic welding, JB weld, the 'fuel tank/radiator' putty patches at the parts store, etc.

FWIW I got a rad for incredibly cheap ($55 shipped) from eBay a while back, my impressions:

We'll see, it's only the cost of 1 gallon of gas, so far it's working, but worst comes to worst I'll just keep a bottle of distilled goodyness till my next paycheck.

replacing the thermostat tomorrow and will look for leaks after the refill. I did notice dripping after turning the car off and looking underneath but I wasn't able to worry about finding out where it was coming from yet. I'll see tomorrow.

Thanks pmohr for the pic...I'll check the filler neck too.

FINAL UPDATE:

Replaced thermostat Saturday only to find out that pmohr was exactly right. It was a leak on the filler neck.

I bought this and so far it is working like a champ...no leaks:

Welllll... That radiator stop leak failed me, along w/ a bit of JB weld.

Tonight the crack went from the legnth of a quarter to about 8 inches and gave the engine bay a good steam cleaning, car is chillin @ whataburger waiting for autozone/orielys/napa/advance to open tomorrow so I can grab a $100 radiator and pull a parking lot job first thing in the morning. Pics will be uploaded soon (like in 8hrs when I should be done w/ all of this, thank god our radiators are easy to get in/out, plus it's already been drained LOL).

Sorry to hear that...

I think I'm going to reapply this epoxy 2 more times up to 6" away from the filler neck for safe measure.

I don't trust JB Weld...anybody who doesn't pay well for bandwidth shouldn't be trusted.

a

Spam = ban.

I finished the radiator change today, only thing left to do is flush my coolant system which will have to wait due to the thunderstorm now.

But radiator changes? CAKE! I'll do a writeup in the middle of one of my flushes when the rain dies down.

I got a ready-rad radiator form Advance auto for 103.91 (Labor day weekend special 20% off online orders), comes w/ a LLT too.

The crack in my radiator:


I'll have better pics and more details on my blog soon.

Anyways, if your radiator has a crack, ATTEND TO IT IMMEDIATELY! Nothing is more embarrassing then having your car sit on a puddle of coolant/water and having to play 50 questions w/ cops and passerbys while you're trying to change a radiator in a whataburger parking lot and tryiung to get out of there as fast as you possibly can (in/out time was under 30 minutes, from parking my parent's car to driving off in mine).

Sorry if I whored up the thread, but I thought what I had to add was relevant!

Some final questions...

My friend told me to crack an egg and drop it in the radiator as a temp fix, has anyone else heard of this? At this point in time I really have little care/regard towards my VQ30DE (Being as it only needs to last about 4 months/20k miles) and I wouldn't mind testing out silly things like this on other parts of my car that'll get replaced w/ the motor soon...

http://www.youtube.com/boredmder#p/a/u/4/Fd4F4Mj2sZI


I wouldn't advise that. Baking soda, eggs, 'head gasket repair', all of that crap just clogs up the entire cooling system more often than it'll actually fix a problem. Mind you it won't just be in the engine and rad, but also in all of the hoses and the heater core as well. Not fun to clean out all of that stuff, especially the heater core.

DARN YOU!!!!

Fine, I'll beat you to the middle console tear down.

And gotcha pmohr.

Have you ever poached an egg? You do that in your radiator and anything smaller than a quarter inch will be plugged. One thing it will probably stop... water flow through your radiator.

Some professional shade tree mechanics I've met swear by only one product that is meant to stop leaks, Blue Devil Head Gasket Sealant. A quart (only does one engine) goes for $53 on Amazon and even more from AutoZone (~$60 when I was working there a couple yrs ago iirc). I wouldn't trust any of these mechanics as far as I could throw them though. The same mechanics also told me that Red Angel Stop Leak (same manufacturer) is crap. A 2oz bottle goes for $35 on Amazon.

-crackhead

If anyone needs one, I have a rad out of a '95 5-speed....won't work for an auto. It has the fans attached, and when i pulled it, all was working.

PM me if anyone wants it