Overheating and weird voltage!!

The coolant overflow is a aftermarket one that came with the aps fmic.

The fans were plugged in!!

 

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm and they are coming on?

 

Yep. I can hear them when they run.

 

air bubbles

 

I'm going with Dream on this one. Seeing as how pretty much every aftermarket over flow is junk, and don't hold crap for coolant to allow for expansion... if it pushes out too much from overflowing when the engine gets hot, then you have no coolant to suck back in when the engine cools off.

 

true, is it possible that it has a small enough leak that it had enough coolant in it for a while, but now its low?

 

Well you have to figure with a low volume overflow, if the engine gets hot, pushes coolant out and overfills the over flow, then you just lost coolant. Keep that cycle happening, without pulling coolant back in from a junk overflow, and bam. You got a low coolant level with possible air bubbles.

 

word.

 

To your mother.

 

when i let it run with the rad. cap off to try and burp it the resevoir starts to slowly overflow..the smallest of bubbles will occur from time to time..i mean small like 1-2 mm and from time to time i mean maybe 2-4 bubbles in 30 minutes..ive never had it overflow from the res. before...my guess would be that theres a large bubble in the system somewhere but i obviously cant get it to burp properly..assuming that burping the system any further is worth my time.

so im going to try again tomorrow..any ideas as far as what i should look for and or do while burping it?

also i checked the oil and i didnt notice any coolant..also the overflow tank is from aps, weve never had problems in the past 3 years,and weve replaced the radiator and gone thru a succesful burping in the past..

 

Do you have the hoses correctly routed on the radiator and overflow tube. I know Subaru has updated the metal line that gets bolted to the front of the radiator, but from what Rexarew said, you have only one cap (on the upper reservoir).

While running, you shouldn't have coolant overflowing from the overflow tank. It may push some into it, but shouldn't be enough to overflow. You should get a cooling bucket from Napa or some auto parts store, and run it with that on the upper res. While it's warm, hold the engine at about 2000 rpms, and see what the flow of bubbles looks like. Really tiny bubbles shouldn't be a worry, and tend to happen on turbo cars from slight turbulence in the cooling system. Bigger bubbles that discolor the coolant (and might smell), are a worry and possible cause for overheating <- caused by head gaskets.

 

And incase you have no idea what I mean by cooling bucket, here is what your looking for. http://www.lislecorp.com/tool_detail.cfm?detail=244

 

its not coming out of the overflow tank..its pushing up and out of the top resevoir...small bubbles is all ive really seen..but im confused as to why its just flowing up and out of the res. its never done that before.

 

My guess is you have some air pocket trapped in the system, and as you heat up the engine the air pocket is growing/pushing out coolant. That's why you need one of the buckets.

 

so buy the bucket and re-burp?

 

I would say yes on that. If that doesn't work, and it's still bubbling, then I would guess you have a sticking thermostat or blown HG's.

If you want to test the thermo, remove it and place it in a pot of boiling water with a thermometer in it and wait to about 170*. It should have a stamping on it that says 76*C on one side, that converts to 168.8*F... so 170*. The brass valve in the thermostat should open if it's not messed up.

 

sweet ill see what i can do about picking up one of those funnels..if that fails ill get to the dirty work..luckily we are adding a new subie to our collection on monday so she can drive it while we tear the wrx apart and pimp slap it around a bit.

 

Pimp slap!

 

ya nickole says that gurdys too pretty to punch and i cant bitch slap her so ill go with pimp slap:biggrin:

 

Keep the pimp hand strong son. You let me know if we need to choke a bitch.

 

:laugh::laugh:

Well, the alternator belt snapped last night on my way home from work. Aric replaced that today.
Come Tuesday the car will be put into storage so it can properly taken apart. Now that I have another car to drive we can just replace anything and everything on the wrx and get everything retuned come time when it's ready to see the road agian!! :yumyum:

 

spell check it Fobia! haha

 

yeah, well I suck at spelling. And I used my stupid spell check. It must not work!

 

that blasted technology

 

Ok so I got a new radiator like Nickole (mishimoto) and installed it on Monday night we did have some over heating due to a bubble but we got it burped pretty good and it stopped over heating, then yesterday night I noticed more steam so I popped my hood and there was coolant splattered everywhere. My car was not over heating ( it read normal) but it it was steaming from the splattered coolant. so today I took a good look at it and tried to figure out where it was coming from, it seemed to be the general area of the lower rad cap on the radiator itself. It was enough to drip off the hood and splatter down on the undertray. ok so long story short everything seems tight the cap was on tight, so I am not eaxtly sure where its coming from I have 2 guesses
1. It was over filled and coming out the overflow
2. something to do with the rad cap not sealing properly.
any suggestions, I was going to try the ideas mention in this thread for checking and burping in case I still have an air bubble, and or head gasket leak. my dad seems to think that's why I blew two rads is cause of a small head gasket leak, but my oil inst milky and I have no other signs of it.

 

You blew two crappy non updated radiators, it happens. My guess is a bad seal around lower cap, if you squeeze the upper rad hose (when hot) is it firm? if its squishy does it make slurping sounds in/around the cap?

 

I will go try this car just cooled down after i was checking a few things..im going to run quick to parts store...

 

it is firm..has good pressure, I think I figure out my problem, I rerouted some of the lines on tues and the hood prop seems be pushing and slightly collapsing one of the lines that meets at the t, where the lines splits and goes to the over flow tank/rad. I re routed the hood prop under the line before I went to the auto part store and let her warm up and when i got home I noticed no more coolant had leaked or splattered.

 

Well, hopefully you get it all figured out!
My issue is probably just a bad t-stat! I know when I had the cracked one on last summer coolant spilled over onto things and slowly burned off. Smells tasty!

 

sure does...I think that i fixed for good i hope...love working on my car but sure glad to not have to work on it for the time being now.

 

nevermind

 

well I got my hopes up for nothing its still squirting coolant. I am going to keep my eye on it, never over heats, I am thinking its the cap, or over filled coolant, but my dad keeps insisting I might have a very small HG leak.

 

well.. cheapest solution...


buy a new cap... drive it and see

 

already planning on it

 

heres my two cents.
i had a 98 legy gt 2.5 dohc and started having a simular problem and it would come and go i went though everything i could think of and finally brought it to my mech. he went though everything i did and then some the last thing he did was a test to see if there was exhaust in the coolant and there was my problem i had a warped head and the ehaust was leaking in the coolant forcing air "bubbles" into my cooling system. i had the heads machined and custom gaskets installed and it has run fine since. i hope this helps but like i stated earlier this was what i had encountered.

 

Blown head gaskets on an N/a 2.5 LGT is common, not on a wrx

 

well did a leak down test and found out its the filler neck yes that's not a typo I said filler neck!!!!! so looks like rad number 4 here I come, I have the worst luck!

 

^^So did anyone have a good answer to this because I have this same problem?

 

After I snapped that alternator belt and had it replaced the issue stopped.

My guess is the belt might be a little worn down. Try to replace the belt and make sure it is on there tightly.

 

Ok! Thank you very much and ill do that asap!

 

How do you know if you alternator belt is tight enough or not?

 

so rexarew did you get the overheating problem fixed?

I dont know if this is relevant to you or subaru, but my gf this summer needed a new water pump in her monte carlo ss. So i replaced it with one from a local auto parts store, along with a tstat. well same problems kept happening with it overheating. I burped it and burped and it didnt matter, it still would overheat. So I decided to take the water pump off, I noticed that the fins were made out of aluminum, and the oem was casted. So it looked different. So I went back to the auto parts store (2weeks later) and asked for one that was cast, which was their most expensive model. I installed that on to her car and bam, no more over heating. I barely had to burp the system and it stopped overheating. So basically the aluminum finned water pump just wasnt pushing out enough volume or something wierd. SO just thought Id give you that heads up and maybe check your subaru one if it wasnt an OEM replacement from subaru.

 

another bump..so now my car still smells of coolant after it has warmed up and sometimes steams but I cant see the leak...I thought it was the filler neck cause I did a leak down test and it leaked from the filler neck. now I cant see any coolant actually leaking but i can smell it. my car doesn't over heat but it now does the "blowing not so hot air at stop lights"..I just checked my levels ad added some coolant to the upper tank but not alot so it was not low enough where it would be blowing colder air but it does. any more ideas?

 

btw just bought one of these! going to get new t clamps and flush my system again to make sure i am not clogged...and then check my head gaskets.