WTF, same thing that happened to Mad Steady Eddie

[LondonBroil]

1996 Galant w/ 162k miles. Never had any major repairs or any breakdowns. Great car so far.

Drove my car to work this morning (about 20 miles). When I pulled into the lot, I looked down and noticed the temperature guage which is usually right in the middle between Cold and Hot was 5/6 of the way to hot.

Went inside and one of the workers mentioned to check the antifreeze overfill resevoir. Sure enough, when I popped the cap off, the little tube that connects to the cap to pump it out had fallen off and was sunk down in the resevoir.

Took out the resevoir, dumped it and cleaned it out, refilled it with fresh antifreeze, put the rubber tube back on the cap, and popped the radiator cap off and filled that too.

When I left work tonight, halfway home the temp guage started shooting up again. Turned the heat on full blast but didn't do much good. Luckily, when I pulled over on the expressway a PennDOT truck pullled right behind me and towed me to the closest gas station free of charge. When he popped the hood he said it was probably the thermostat.

Question 1: Gas station is about 5 miles from my house. How much of a risk is it to pick it up tomorrow and drive it home in its condition?

Question 2: If it's the thermostat, would the rubber tube that fell off the cap controlling the overflow from the resevoir have caused the thermostat to go bad or are those independant of each other?

[Ricky_Bobby]

Ok...

First of all, you can probably make it 5 miles ok. If it got really hot after 2 miles you can stop, shut it off, and let it cool down for 15 or 20 minutes and repeat until home.

Second, the thermostat is totally unrelated to the overflow problem. I have an idea and if I'm right you should be fine. If the tube on the overflow fell off then the pressure from the cooling system would have forced water into the reservoir. When the thermostat opens again it should pull that water back into the radiator. It couldn't pull it back because of the tube coming loose. On the next cycle it was low on water and when the temperature sending unit is dry it reads hot. So you fixed that but there is probably still air in the system and it just hasn't purged it all yet. I would run it with the radiator cap off and watch for the water level to go down when it gets up to temp. This is a sign that the thermostat is opening to circulate more water. When it goes down add more water directly to the radiator and repeat until it starts to overflow, then put the cap back on. Note you will probably overfill it a little since you have antifreeze in the overflow now, but you could drain some out to fix that. If it doesn't circulate water throught the radiator when it gets hot then your thermostat is probably stuck.

Hope this helps and GL.

[Mad Steady Eddie]

good luck...I hope it's just the thermostat

[LondonBroil]

I found it interesting that while my wife was driving me home, I figured I'd put up a post about this in this forum to see what kind of help I could get. Then I see your post which is almost my exact problem, and the same brand and model car. Creepy.