Has anyone had to replace their radiator on a 4th Gen due to overheating or clogging?

I have been chatting with shoebox about this, and I noticed that I am not able to find any posts about anyone having to replace a radiator due to overheating issues and a faulty radiator....

Just curious if anyone has ever run into a mystery overhating issue and resolved it by replacing the radiator on their LT1 car??

If you did not replace the radiator to resolve the MYSTERY issue, then what did it end up being? ANy help is appreciated.

Thanks

ADam G

 

How did you narrow it down to your radiator?? Overheating can be caused by a bad stat or even a blown head gasket.

 

The vapor release tube that connects the two heads together (behind the intake) clogged up on me, and caused intermittant overheating. If you have any reason to believe that this may be restricted, its a lot less expensive than a new radiator.

 

OK, how in the world did you narrow it down to the vapor release tube? Thats the last thing I would suspect.... What are the symptoms of that being an issue, and how hard is that to replace? Easy enough to get the parts?

I have ruled out everything other than the radiator from what I can tell.


Just curious if anyone has had to replace their radiator for this reason?

ADam G

 

Try running a flush like Prestone part # as100p..... Its a two part system...Has an activator and neutralizer.... Just follow the directions....Takes about and hour + to do it right, but it works... Most of the shop in my area use it....

 

Are you sure there is no air in the system?

In my case I had to extend my air dam under the car about 2 1/2 inches when I installed ground effects.

 

I have, but not on my Bird... I had the issue on my 150K mile Cavalier...

I only had like 6-10 tubes left in the radiator that were flowing anything...

This was after flushing it in the fall, driving it all winter, and then this spring when the weather got warmer, the car overheating...

When we drained it, we could see how bad it was really cloged.

 

I had to have my radiator cleaned out last year. There was a lot of build-up in the radiator and the car went from running 220 degrees to 180 degrees.
Kevin

 

mine was also clogged pretty good with build up. So when i took out the radiator to put in the cam i flushed it out good with a power washer....i know some would advise against this saying that there's a specific way to flush a radiator but it worked fine for me. All the crap seems to be gone and it flows pretty good so far. Take off the screw at the bottom of the radiator and see if coolent comes out first or if it's built up at the bottom of the radiator ( that was my problem ^).

 

Only problems I'm aware of is if you're running Water Wetter and ever added tap water to the system...you'll get some nice gunk/buildup.