Alright my first question is a dumb one... but I'm not too confident in my abilities here so bear with me.

After about 40+ minutes of driving my engine makes it up to about 245F. This first happened yesterday, before that I hadn't seen it top 230. So I took in to a mechanic, he looked it over, idled it for 15-20 minutes and it sat around 210. Said he couldn't find anything wrong at all, that the fans were blowing, coolant was flowing and showed my coolant was nice and clean. Then sent me home. Thing is, the coolant was a pretty green. (Just bought the car, wasn't around for last coolant change).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Camaro uses the orange GM DexCool coolant? Would this be the cause of my heating issue?

 

Not necessarily, Prestone for instance makes Dexcool equivalent coolant and it is the standard old lime green color.

 

Ah. Okay, wasn't sure about that. Thanks.

Any ideas what I should look at? I figure at 8 bucks, I'll swap out the the thermostat tonight after it cools down.

 

You have some, what seems to be, conflicting information. You have high temperature yet the mechanic didn't. Can you duplicate his results?

First thing to do is also the simplest. Look under the car....is the plastic airdam in place? Without it, you won't get enough air directed into the radiator for adequate cooling. If the dam is there, look into the slot that feeds the radiator..is there anything blocking the radiator? Plastic bags are a favorite here.

If that doesn't answer it, let everything cool and check the coolant level in the radiator itself. If it's low, top it up and bleed the system. A good explanation of how to do this is on Shoebox's page...look under 'refill": http://shbox.com/1/4th_gen_tech2.html#cooling

Good luck!

 

Alrighty. Letting the car idle in my driveway, with the hood down it gets to about 225. I pop the hood open and continue to let it idle it gets down to around the same 210 temps the mechanic got.

The Air Dam is in place and in good condition. Nothing is blocking the radiator, the only thing I could find that might be blocking air flow is the plastic piece between the radiator and washer fluid resevoir was hanging somewhat loose. I tied it up and out of the way temporarily with wire (This did not seem to affect the idle temp). At 225 both fans are running and I can feel air being sucked through the radiator.

 

Which coolant you use will not affect the cooling, unless you have inadvertantly mixed the two different types and caused some sludge. Both conventional and Dex-Cool are the same ethylene glycol coolant. The anti-corrosion and lubricant additives are just different. But heat transfer characteristics are essentially the same.

You can't use an $8 thermostat in an LT1. That sounds like a Gen 1 SBC thermo. The LT1 uses a special thermostat because of the unique "reverse flow" cooling system:

Courtesy of Shoebox:

http://shbox.com/1/tstat.jpg

The fans should both turn on, on low speed at 226*F, and go to high speed at 235*F. Since there are two separate coolant temp sensors - one to feed the PCM and another for the dash gauge - it is possible one of the temp sensors is not reading correctly, and either misleading the PCM (water pump sensor) or misleading you and the mechanic (driver's side head sensor).

 

Fred - you beat me to the punch. Yup, make sure you use the LT1 stat. You could try a 160* after a coolant flush. I didn't see where you lived. what is the ambient temp where you are. I notice a huge difference in South/Cent FL in 80* days and 90* days. This won't be your problem but if you are running 210* on days where the high temp is 75* then you probably have issues. I'll run upwards of 210* when the ambient is around 95* and I'm stuck in traffic. When was the last time your W/P was changed? Is it the stocker or electric? Might want to breech load the engine with new stat and w/p. If you do the water pump, BE CAREFUL AROUND THE OPTI. They don't like water.

 

The thermostat was exactly like the one that came out of the car, and the picture on shbox.

The new thermostat did not help, once again I reached 240. While not surprised, replacing it was simple and cheap enough.

I live in Arizona, the ambient temp is around 105 currently. The water pump is stock.

At this point, I'm going to take it in on Monday to my old mechanic. Bastard's expensive, but I've always gotten quality work from him. I'm paranoid about my car and don't want to screw something up myself.

Thanks for all your help guys, I really appreciate it.

 

Dumb question, but have you checked your radiator cooling fins. Just got done with a '96 vehicle where all of the sudden it overheated one day. Ended up that half the fins on the bottom were missing not giving it enough cooling surface to adequately cool the vehicle.

 

When you start your car up in the morning,did you here any strange noises?Could be the water pump.Could be a clogged radiator as well.Hope this helps.

 

Let us know what your mechanic finds out. I am interested in the solution. I can't see an difficult problem with over heating but then again.......

 

Alright, after much tinkering and delay, the verdict is simply.....

New Sender Unit and Temperature Gauge. Apparently the aftermarket gauge one of the previous owners installed sucked and was displaying an incorrect temperature.

Cost me 150 bucks... told ya the bastard was expensive. But out of 3 mechanics he's the only that corrected it.

Temperatures are now 195 at idle with open hood, 210 city driving.

 

I gave you the answer for free........

 

 

Yar, you did. So did a buddy at work, but he didn't guess til the mechanic had it.