Overheating
- Thread starter hpmaxim
- Start date
The deed is done. Repair was WAY easier than I expected. Everything appears fine, although I haven't actually driven it yet. But I have heat, fan cycles on and off and temp gauge was pegged in the middle once it warmed up. Exhaust smelled like exhaust, no hint of coolant odor or steam and no leaks or mysterious fluid.
Two worrisome signs:
1) I put in about a gallon of distilled water and only dumped about a half gallon (hard to know for sure since it didn't wind up entirely in the catch pan). Its hard to imagine I boiled the rest of it off... but who knows.
2) After putting the gallon in... When I stuck a funnel in the radiator I could add fluid and it'd just stay there, but eventually the level would drop. It's possible I was slowly displacing airpockets.
Oddly rad fluid was green, reservoir fluid appeared blue.
Two worrisome signs:
1) I put in about a gallon of distilled water and only dumped about a half gallon (hard to know for sure since it didn't wind up entirely in the catch pan). Its hard to imagine I boiled the rest of it off... but who knows.
2) After putting the gallon in... When I stuck a funnel in the radiator I could add fluid and it'd just stay there, but eventually the level would drop. It's possible I was slowly displacing airpockets.
Oddly rad fluid was green, reservoir fluid appeared blue.
Mine did that too... I didn't worry about it...
Any small bubbles now will work their way to the top of the rad and blow through the overflow tank.
Then, when it cools. It draws in liquid back into the rad and fills it up.
sagalamoto
Member
- :
- 2002 Mazda Protoge5
first time poster on this forum...long time protege5 owner.
Before assuming anything drastic, replace the radiator cap...if you haven't already. A bad cap will cause air to enter the system and cause overheating, you will even notice it will look like it is boiling in the coolant reservoir.
Before assuming anything drastic, replace the radiator cap...if you haven't already. A bad cap will cause air to enter the system and cause overheating, you will even notice it will look like it is boiling in the coolant reservoir.
- :
- Protege5 2003
That makes no sense, turning on the AC will just put more load on the motor. What you should do is
roll the windows down
crank up the ventilation fan
turn on the heat
That will cool the motor by dumping heat into the inside of the car. This only works when the coolant is still present and isn't full of air bubbles - it requires that coolant be able to move into the heater core. So if you blow your radiator or the head gasket, or a hose bursts, do not do this, instead pull over immediately and shut down. Otherwise, the heater trick can keep a car from overheating while going up a long hill on a hot day. The driver may have a heat stroke, but that is a separate issue!
mazdadude
ZOOOOOOOOOM ZOOOOOOOOOM
- :
- '16.5 Mazda CX-5 Touring
Actually you are better off to turn the temp dial to the MAX HEAT, and then turn the A/C ON... this way the extra heat flows and gets dumped into the heater core, and with another extra fan now spinning on the radiator will also drop the temps much faster with BOTH rad fans now going, and the heater core/hvac sys acting like another little radiator...
I too once thought that the A/C on would add too much temp and load to the motor, but I was proved wrong when I tested out the various methods we both described, and the A/C and Heater BOTH ON method was the clear winner. Dropping temps much faster than either one alone.
Last edited:
It depends why you are overheating. If you are overheating because the radiator fan isn't coming on, then switching the A/C on might save you. If you are overheating cause the thermostat stopped working, turning on the heat full blast might help a little, but it won't stop it from overheating. Anyway, I've confirmed it was definitely the thermostat. I'm running pure distilled water right now. I'll drive on it for a week or so and check on my oil and coolant level, and if all is good, I'll drain out a gallon and then fill with antifreeze. Thanks for all the help guys.
Yea... I forgot to add that part...
- :
- Protege5 2003
Absolutely! If the belt which drives the water pump has broken then the coolant circulation will stop, none of these tricks will help cool the motor at all, and the only safe thing to do is to immediately pull over and turn off the car.
mazdadude
ZOOOOOOOOOM ZOOOOOOOOOM
- :
- '16.5 Mazda CX-5 Touring
So true! (drinks)
but if your "water pump belt" is broken on your Protege, you are already DOA.
Last edited:
- :
- Protege5 2003
Unfortunately the P5 doesn't provide a lot of drama immediately upon that belt coming off. It waits awhile and then blows up. The battery light will come on but otherwise the car will continue to run more or less normally. When it happened to my daughter she drove mine (now hers) until the overflow tank melted and the radiator burst, which sadly will occur before the battery runs down. I'm sure the temperature must have spiked upwards on the gauge, and equally sure she didn't look at it until steam started escaping from under the hood. As I recall, at the time she was most worried that the radio had stopped working.
This is one example of a situation where a bit more machine intelligence in the car could go a long way. Maybe recent Mazdas put some of the computing power on board to use and can just tell the driver when the accessory belt has failed? It would be pretty silly to have that many computers around and (still) only light up a single warning light.
