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Originally Posted by DenverAirport
Understood. Is there any way to verify the pump is pumping without taking off the cover / timing belt? Also curious about diagnosing coolant sensor -- I'm assuming I can pull it out and test it in water but are there any better ways of doing so?
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After the thermostat has opened you can visually see flow in the radiator. Impellers and shafts can break. That sort of situation is more common in semi‘s, but I have had it happen on a Chevy 350 before.
As far as getting your sensor baseline it’s fairly straightforward, you’ll obviously want to test the coolant temperature at a cold state using whatever you choose for a thermometer or a temperature probe you can use with a DVOM. Even a cooking thermometer can work. Compare yours pro breeding with your scan tool reading. You can even use the ambient air temperature as a baseline if the vehicles been sitting for a while and not in the direct sunlight.
Temperature can be done a couple of different ways. You can get geeky and actually measure the resistance at a specified temperature with a sensor directly. The simplest way it’s going to be to depressurize the cooling system with it hot and then use your probe to verify. The flip Radiator cap so nice for this, you can obviously unscrew the radiator with a rag/towel and a good amount of caution. The cooler is obviously going to be hot, and depending on your coolant mixture and what you have going on depressurizing the radiator can/will change the boiling point.
Lots of ways to skin the cat, just depends on how you want to do it.
Don’t assume anything and do a good job of diagnostics.
Since you’ve had a recent head gasket and cylinder repair, that does bring a few things into the equation. Make sure there is no excessive pressure in the radiator, or any kind of gas coming to the cooling system out of the top of the radiator once it’s full. If you’re getting a white smoke, that is coolant being burned.
You also mentioned that your gauge doesn’t move. Sensor measures resistance and reports to ECM, that information gets pushed to the display.
The thing is is without verifying the data and the flow m. We just don’t know what’s going on, the shop could have had a rag stuffed in there somewhere for all you know. That said, I wouldn’t put 215 in the danger zone. Elevated, but not danger zone assuming you have a radiator and cooling system that can hold pressure and good coolant in it.
