Quote:
Originally Posted by werminghausen
I changed the timing belt after 200k miles (3rd belt) and I have forgotten to fasten one cooling hose properly
What happened, the hose from the thermostat to the radiator popped off and I lost 2.5 gallons of fluid (from total 3.2 gallon total) and the engine overheated dramatically... I did not realize this cruising on the highway.
I heard unusual mechanical engine noises and then I saw the temperature gauge in the red zone,. also the CEL was on.
I stopped and shut the engine off. I was very uncertain if I already damaged something.
After shut engine down I saw that the one coolant hose came off and I lost most of the fluid.
On the highway I did not get the typical smoke/vapor as a sign for overheating... only when I slowed down the car.
Also I did not get a low fluid lever dash light. I saw after the fact that the check engine light came on and also
I waited for the engine to cool down and meanwhile I got some water... I connected the hose back to the thermostat housing and filled 2 1/2gallons of water (what I lost) back to the cooling system. In the beginning there was still a lot of vapor coming out.
The car started normally and I could drive home. The engine seemed to work normally. (As i had no tools to connect the hose properly I left the cap open, so no pressure could build up)
The engine ran about 100miles meanwhile and I cannot see any difference or strange behavior. Am I just lucky and nothing bad happened....or it there some aftermath with this incidence?
Questions:
-Might the engine have some damage after severe overheating?
-What can be the consequence in that event of severe overheating.
After the incident I am questioning.
Why did I not get a proper warning for low coolant level or serious overheating?
Does Toyota not have these basic warning lights.
As I said I did get the high temperature reading but no acoustical or warning signal or low fluid level.
Best, Martin
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I have had this same thing happen to my engine. Forget about "diagnosing" it, it is junk and needs to be repaired. All engines, regardless of manufacturer, suffer some amount of unrecoverable damage after overheating. In the case of the 2UZ-FE, the heads are the first thing to warp. The warpage occurs between the cylinder walls which tends to suck in coolant and blow it out the exhaust at a minimum or at a maximum, severely lower the engine power at high RPM's due to exhaust gas "overlap" between cylinders. Do yourself a favor and find 2 replacement heads from another engine which was not overheated, take the heads to get decked, pull a vacuum on them and have all the valves and seats checked and simply rebuild the top end of your engine and be confident that you have addressed the issue.
In the case of my T4R, I installed a digital cylinder head temperature gauge which shows real time temperature of the actual aluminum in the heads so that I can know if my engine is ever going near overheating in the future and catch it before it does. I also did not like that there is no coolant level warning feature and figured that cylinder head temp is a good indicator of actual engine temperature.
