Overheating, blown radiator, other issues?
 

So yesterday I was driving up to the mountains to go skiiing. Roads were hard packed snow and ice, so I had 4wd engaged, was concentrating on the road. All of a sudden I look down and the temp gauge is 3/4 of the way to the top! Oh shit. I pull over and turn off the engine. Get out and inspect what I can. No signs of pink milkshake, hoses look fine, oil cap looks good too. Only thing Is steam is coming out of the coolant overflow tank. No signs of spattered fluids.

Ultimately since I’m on the side of a mountain pass road with no phone service. I decide to to turn around and roll in neutral down the road till I can get somewhere with phone service and a safe place to stop. Had to do a little driving with the heat creeping up a little but never got as high as it had originally and never in the red.

Anyways, got to a good spot. Called a tow truck. Took it to nearest repair shop. Did pressure test on radiator and found the leak. Advised putting stop leak in and refill coolant so I could get home. He put universal gold coolant in that he said mixes safely with everything.

Car drives fine afterwards. Smooth and everything. Ordered new radiator already because I consider the stop leak a temporary band aid. Plan is to do a full flush with distilled water to get out the stop leak junk, gold coolant and then install new radiator and refill with Toyota red coolant.

My question is what is the likelihood I warped a head or blew a head gasket? Would those symptoms show up right away? Or do they take time to develop? As I said everything is operating like normal right now, I’m just paranoid. Or is there anything else I need to be concerned about or that I should replace at the same time?

Overall irritated that I hadn’t noticed the leak ahead of time. As I try really hard to take good care of my truck. Appreciate the help and input. Sorry for the long story. It’s a 2002 4wd SR5 with 181k. Thanks.


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its a gamble. Some overheat and have issues right away, some over heat and have no issues. Just depends on how overheated and for how long.
a leak down test will tell you a lot

I'm sure you are fine. In my experience, if your rig only got up to 3/4 hot on the gauge, you are still a good ways from truly over heating. Be glad you caught it when you did ! But sounds like you are fine ..

Going forward, you can get yourself an Ultraguage for $80 and set a coolant temp alarm. That way it will never creep up on you again without you being aware and you will catch problems earlier.

The 3.4l motor is'pretty tough little engine. replace the radiator and drive it. you might have caught the overheating in time and avoided serious damage but be aware and lookout for white smoke,sweet smell from tail pipe, misfires'' coolant losss' and engine stumbling etc

Good idea, thanks! I’ve had my eye on one for awhile now, this is a good excuse to finally go for it. Do you have to manually set what temp you want the alarm at? If so, what is recommended?

I installed an external tranny cooler in series with the radiator over the summer prior to moving/driving across country. In hindsight, I knew the radiator was due to be replaced but I thought I had time to spare.


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Yes. You can turn the alarms on and off for many of the parameters it measures and you set the alarm points.

You just see where your 4runner runs normally and then set the alarm point a few degrees above that. The hottest temps will occur when you have just shut down for a few minutes and restarted (heat soak) so I go just high enough that it doesn't trip on restart too often.

I run at 83 (182) normally with OEM cooling system and set the alarm at 92 (197.6). This spread does not even register on the factory gauge.

Picked up new oem radiator at the post office yesterday and installed it after dinner.

Still running good overall since the incident last Friday. Headed back to a redo this weekend.

Definitely leaning towards buying an ultra gauge.


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Not sure what an ultra guage costs yet torque pro is about $5 (app that works off your phone), does require a standard '327elm' odb2 reader and a few minutes to set up, including alarms if you like. howto set alarm for temp and speed on torque on Vimeo

:cowboy:

Flush that stopleak crap out.

I also overheated my engine on a long climb with a faulty fan and got about 3/4 of the way up. I had a bluetooth reader and it read 230*. Pretty hot but it was only for a short time and did not harm my engine. I'm guessing you were around that same temperature.

Had originally planned to do. But due to time constraints, an incoming winter storm and the fact that I am living in an apartment and had to do the repair in the parking lot in below freezing temps, I opted to just do a simple replacement and no flush so I could have peace of mind of no longer having a band aid on but a true fix.


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I'm running a Ultra Gauge and able to set alarms is a really nice feature.
I think Torque Pro is a nice app and very battery intensive on the phone. Yes you could run a charging cable to the phone. Being able to hide the wire nicely would be hard.
Your better off doing a clean install with a Scan Gauge or an Ultra Gauge.

Wow, I need to go back to school. That was a heck of a run off sentence...


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I had a very similar issue on my '98 in the snow as well... Ended up being the radiator cap. the one that had been on the truck for 20 yrs had a worn rubber seal allowing the system to lose pressure.

Replaced the cap about a year ago and no issues since.