I have been trying to defeat the everlasting overheating problem, with no luck, since I bought this car! I have tried to find all the leaks and have fixed them. The last one was the intake manifold gaskets. Still over heating. I have flushed the system and I thought I properly "burped" the system, but it sounds like there is still some "swish, swish, swish" noise under the dash. When the engine is cool, if I pop the radiator cap, the overflow tank is completely full (overflows when engine is hot) and the radiator needs some more antifreeze. I have done a compression test and this is what I got:

1)130

3)110

2)120

4)120

 

I hope this doesn't indicate a head gasket issue. There is no foam or bubbles in the coolant, the exhaust doesn't smell like coolant, I am totally at a loss on this one. Please help. The last thing to do is to replace the thermostat I guess.

forgot to mention that I lost the overflow tank lid, so I used some duct tape and a ziptie to close it off. not sure if this is important

Have you replaced the radiator cap? Also, have you checked for clogs in your radiator? If you let your car warm up to operating temp and run your hands across the radiator it should be warm across the whole grid. If you find cool spots it means you have some clogs.

Get a pressure tester and test the system as well as the cap.

 

Compression tests are useless for head gasket checking....... in fact they are mostly useless in general except to identify a cylinder with a problem *in comparison* to other cylinders and as a general pass/fail check to see if an engine has enough compression to even run. They are highly dependant on too many factors to make their numbers "publishable" on this site or any other. The numbers cannot be compared to any other engine.

 

GD

Ok thanks. I will check the radiator and cap, as well as do a pressure test.