Hey everyone GarageKing here, and if your car is overheating leaving you
stranded it doesn't matter if you have a new car or an old car I'm gonna talk
about the top 10 tips that are going to help you solve your overheating problems.
let's begin very briefly we just have to understand how it all works all cars are
pretty much the same we're not gonna talk about air cooled because that's
different maybe I'll do another video if you guys want me to on air cooled but
these are for all water-cooled engines are all generally the same so your
engine radiator you have a bunch of hoses it's filled with some type of
fluid, let's call it coolant antifreeze whatever it has a whole bunch of
different names it'll circulate through and cool your engine okay you have a
radiator there's your engine some hoses you even have an expansion tank and you
have a water pump which circulates it all so that's very
briefly how it works so first thing if you don't have coolant you're gonna
overheat so if you have low coolant you're gonna overheat because there's
not enough of it circulating around so I'll show you how to check that real
quick let's check our coolant and then step two okay so if you have a newer
type vehicle that has an overflow tank you're gonna want to check your overflow
tank and if your overflow tank has fluid in it then your rad is gonna be full so
let's take a look down in here
and there you go you can see it is full here's another coolant reservoir
different type this one's very easy to see you can see there's your rad cap
goes there and there is lots in there so we know we got lots of coolant in there
enough this was empty what we could do when the engine is cold we could take
off the top look down inside and see how much is in there
just to see but we can tell right now we have lots of coolant so we're okay so
next up on the list three and four we have water pump and electrical pump now
they're kinda the same but they're a little bit different - water pump is
mechanical it's driven by a belt and electrical pump is driven by electricity
and the computer determines when to turn it on and off so your water pump
is located at the front of the engine there's a weep hole on the bottom, and a lot
of times they'll leak from that weep hole I'm gonna cut in now and I will
show you a water pump I'll explain quick look at a water pump here we go we have
one water pump right here and you can see this is a mechanical it just turns
with the belt sometimes these would spin or if they get broken this one here is
steel here so I don't think that's gonna break at all so that's good I had talked
about the weep hole on the bottom of the pump there's the weep hole right there
this one was done with an engine overhaul so it was tough to get this
pump out so we just put a new one in anyway but it wasn't actually leaking
you can see their rubber o-ring goes in there but basically this is it is what a
mechanical water pump looks like and you have your veins right in here and when
this spins it just forces the fluid around inside the engine so that's all
that is but important to notice especially or note especially if you're
doing timing belts is to check the weep hole on all of them because sometimes if
you see a little trickle coming out then you know they're starting to leak from
the seal and it's time to change it. The electrical pump on the other hand is
just like I said driven by electricity and actually you know I'll even cut out
To show you some footage of an electrical pump and even what it's
supposed to sound like because not a lot of people do it's actually kind of cool
there we go and you can see getting out the air bubbles in the system if we go
underneath the car let's hear it run and there we go running next we have number
five and you're saying what the heck is a flow restriction well flow restriction
is when your system is all corroded it's full of gunk it's really dirty so what's
happening is it's not circulating fast enough so we can't draw the heat away
from the engine into the radiator where you have air coming through
cooling it off and having that cool fluid go back inside your engine so when
you check your system and you open up your coolant reservoir right there that
extra tank make sure that you're coolant it's pink, yellow, green, or whatever almost
clearish whatever type it's supposed to have in there whatever because there's a
many different types of coolant so whatever type of coolant supposed to
have in there make sure it's clean because a lot of times women's dirty
that doesn't flow property the other thing I should mention is when it's
dirty a lot of times it'll wear out your system more essentially the water pump
because it can get tiny bits of grit and stuff in there and what happens is your
pump is spinning on a seal and what happens is the grip gets in there
between the pump shaft and the seal and it actually where's pump down and it
couldn't cause leaks so keep your system clean so number six is bad rad so you
got a bad rad here so your radiator is all corroded, or it's leaking it's
cracked whatever it's defective so you got a bad radiator I'll try to
throw in a shot of me replacing a Honda Civic radiator where it was all corroded
out at the bottom and it was not good so a lot of times especially in these newer
cars it's an aluminum core and it's got plastic on the top in the bottom so when
you're looking at your radiator the plastic on the top and bottom
is crimped to the aluminum and they always leak there as promised
here's the bottom of the radiator we're just gonna zoom in, draw a few little
arrows and show you that is where they all leak so you can see there's the
aluminum crimping onto the plastic very very common for them to leak,
they leak both at the bottom and the top so
that's what I was talking about with the radiators bad radiator could be a
problem for your overheating. #7 not too common but it can happen
especially if you have a water-cooled Vanagon, is a belt, so your belt pops off
flies off whatever pulleys aren't aligned right or it's just worn and it
comes off your water pump is not turning anymore the belt turns the water pump
if the water pump is just stationary it's not turning anymore what happens is
that coolant stops moving around anymore so your car overheats so just make sure
all the belts are where they should be and you're not missing a belt.
#8 the thermostat, now the thermostat actually controls the flow in the engine
because the T-Stat doesn't just open and close, it opens in varying
degrees so it can open a little bit it can start letting a little bit of
coolant through, and then once your engine's really hot it will go wide open
and it'll have maximum flow so your thermostat regulates how much or I
should say the velocity of the coolant that's flowing through the system so if
you have a bad thermostat that is stuck shut obviously you're not gonna have any
flow and your engine's gonna overheat now if your thermostat is stuck open
it's gonna flow too much and your engine's actually going to run too cold it can
cause check engine light because it won't heat up fast enough so we're gonna
look at a thermostat and I'll explain I'll explain okay so here we have two
thermostats so as you can see this one's got just a little bit of a rubber seal
around it and let's see if I can get a better look here there you go nice close
look what happens is this actually opens up and then it controls the amount of
coolant that comes from one side to the other side the hot side and cold side so
here's another one BMW this one actually looks kind of funny but if you look on
the inside I'll try to get you a good view there you go you can see it's the
same it's the same thing it's they just put it in a fancy housing there you go
in there you can see is the spring on the bottom which isn't a lot difference
from this spring here so what they've done is they've just put the thermostat
in a fancy housing and obviously it's a lot more money but anyway so there's
your thermostat. #9 so bad radiator cap, so what does that mean??
if you're radiator cap is bad, it's not gonna hold the pressure it's supposed to
hold and what will happen then is if it's
venting your coolant will boil now what a lot of people don't understand is if you
take the radiator cap off your car, and start the engine it's actually gonna run.
Nothings going to happen, you're not gonna break anything but as soon as your engine starts
building heat the coolant expands and will
start coming out and it's gonna start gushing everywhere and then
obviously it'll boil and that's why they tell you never take a rad cap off when
your engine is hot because when it's hot it's under a whole lot of pressure and
actually if you take the rad cap off say when your engines over a hundred degrees
Celsius let's just say you have pure water let's just say you have pure water
in there and your engine's over a hundred degrees Celsius so say your
engines over 110 degrees Celsius I don't know what that would be
in Fahrenheit I'll try to throw something up there now everything is
fine and it's just sitting there the minute you take off that cap you've
lowered the pressure so you've lowered the boiling point so it'll actually
start boiling and then it will over flow like crazy, so that's why
people say never take the rad cap off a hot engine because it can boil over
so a bad rad cap can definitely cause you to overheat because it'll reduce
your system's capacity because it'll boil sooner so I don't wanna make that
too complex but there's little testers you can buy maybe I should do a video on
one let me know how to test a rad cap and there's it's like a little pump up
thing you put the rad cap on it and then you pump it up and you and it should
hold a certain amount of pressure so radiator cap can definitely cause you to
boil over. #10 on the list is the fan, this is the fan that cools the rad
now most new cars have these little electric fans here I won't get into how
to test them but on most vehicles if it's warmed up and you put it on defrost
or you turn the a/c on the fan should come on at least on one speed so that's
a quick simple way to do just a little test on most vehicles now there is
another type of fan here here we have a clutch fan this one's in a truck here
and you can see when I move it back and forth it doesn't spin that easily it
almost feels like it's got like syrup or some sticky in it that's how it's
supposed to spin it's not supposed to spin freely it's supposed to have a
little bit of drag on it that means it is working properly so that concludes
the video folks so rather than going back to me
standing in front of a whiteboard let's check out some drifting cars here's the
part where I get to thank you for watching my video really appreciate it
I'll also ask you if you would kindly subscribe I'd appreciate it trying to
grow my channel hopefully you got something out of the video if you have
any questions or comments please leave them below I do my best to answer
everything that's it for now GarageKing over and out everyone have a great day :)