Please help. Thought we were done.

[roguestriker]

SO we just spent the last month pulling out the water pump and redoing the timing on my 95 4runner. We "finished" tonight, and before we put in the coolant and oil (were a quart low on oil) we started it up and it sounded good. no problems. It was not on more than 2 mins and then we shut it off.

THen we went to Walmart and got the coolant and quart of oil. we got howe, flushed the cooling system and then put in the fluids. as we started the engine this time, we noticed that it was idling high (about 1200 RPMs). we thought this would be short term and left it on to see how it sounded. with in a minute, we noticed smoke coming off the engine, which we thought to be steam from extra water from the hose from flushing the cooling system. but it got intense and we turned it off.

Now the truck can be idleing for less than a minute and the top left of the radiator and thick hose going to engine are scalding hot. Smoke comes pouring out of the engine and there is a ton of pressure and heat coming out of the radiator and hose, but only the top left (when looking at the engine)

Please help me and tell me this is not a super big deal. this is a brand new symptom that was not present in the initial problema nd we can not figure out what we did. seems like a clog or something.

HELP!!!!!

 

[GonOvr]

Well you have a flow problem (one hose extremely hotter than the other). Either the water pump or thermostat. Since you removed the water pump, im leaning towards that. Replacing the thermostat is a cheap replacement. When removing the water pump you may have knocked the impeller loose, too much RTV if you used any, something stuck in the water jacket, so it isn't circulating water anymore. Sounds like you got it pretty hot though. I would let it cool down completely and start it up again for about 30 sec. make sure it isn't knocking or any crazy sounds coming from the engine. High idle can be can be diagnosed once you get the cooling system doing it's job.

 

[roguestriker]

thanks we will try that

Thank you for your response. we were thinkin that we would just try to bleed the air out of the cooling system cuz we were fresh out of ideas. so thank you for being the only one to respond, cuz now we have something to try. do you think we will need to take the water pump off again if we did use too much RTV? we did use a bit. the thermostat is accessable right now with everything put back on, but if we need to scrape off the RTV we will need to take it of again. any ideas?

Thank you again. i hope this fixes it, cuz it is a symptom out of nowhere, and it is such a drag not having my truck working.

 

[spencergt66]

sounds like a head gasket stick a vacuum gauge on the intake and see if its steady or jumping all over the place

 

[willyt4r]

fill through the top radiator hose

Have you tried to fill the radiator through the top radiator hose? also did you put the heat on high to run the coolant troughout the system?