One, two, three, four! Rev up your engines! [ENGINE REVVING] It's time for scottykilmer.com. If your car is
over-heating then today's your lucky day because
I'm going to show you how to fix a car that overheats. Now many things can
cause a car to overheat, so start with the basics--
check the radiator fluid. When it's cold, take the
radiator cap, look inside. In this case, it's bone dry. So the next thing to
do is to pressure test the system to check for leaks. Here's this pressure leak
testing kit I've had for years. And don't worry if you
want to do it yourself, hey, you can buy these
things used for $30. And some of the new ones
only cost about $70. Just hook it up to the radiator,
then pump up the pressure. And in this case, you
can see it's leaking right out of the radiator. The radiator is
just full of holes. Now, this case is pretty easy. There was a hole
in the radiator. But it was more complex, you
watch the pressure on the gauge and see if it
starts to move down. Pump it up to 16 lbs. pressure
or so, and watch the gauge. And if it starts dropping like
this, you know there's a leak and you have to find where
the squirt is coming from. But let's say you
pressure tested it and there weren't
any leaks at all. What do you do next? Well realize that the
radiator caps are supposed to hold pressure in, so
if they're worn and rusty like this one, you might
just need a new radiator cap. Now there are machines
that test radiator caps, but, hey, they're so cheap,
just go buy another one and stick it on. Now if that doesn't fix
it, the next thing to check is the cooling fans. So start the car up and then
turn the AC onto full blast. And then check the
cooling fans to see if they're working back there. But in this case, you
can see the left fan and the right fan is turning. If the fans aren't
working, there won't be enough air sucked
through the radiator and it will overheat. And when they don't work,
check the fan motors-- they often burn up. To check to see if
the motors is out, just get a little
jumper wire and stick one end on the positive
cable of the battery and stick the other end on the
red cable that feeds the motor. If the fan doesn't
start spinning, you'll know the
motor is burned out. But let's say the
fans are working fine. Well, then you might
have a bad thermostat. These thermostats close
so the engine warms up. And when it gets hot
they're supposed to open up. And sometimes they stick. Most thermostats are
pretty easy to get to. On this Toyota you just follow
the bottom radiator hose, and there's the thermostat
housing back here. It just has a bolt on the
top and a bolt on the bottom. You pull it out and
replace the thermostat. And then you better
hope a new thermostat fixes your overheating problem,
because if it doesn't, then you have one of two
rather expensive problems. Either the radiator
itself is just so old it can't dissipate
heat anymore, or the head gasket on the
engine is starting to blow. Now these modern
radiators-- they're made of plastic
and aluminum, often corrode inside, and don't
dissipate heat anymore. They don't leak and they
look perfectly fine, but they just can't
get rid of the heat. This is a radiator that
I just replaced on a car because it was overheating. As you can see, it
looks perfectly fine, but it was corroded inside,
and once I replaced it, the car ran normal. And as expensive as
some radiators may be, you better hope the
radiator fixes it because the only other thing
can be a bad head gasket. And in that case, you have
to tear the engine apart. And that can cost well over
$1,000 on most modern cars. So before you turn
the engine down, it's a good idea to do a
combustion leak test on it to make sure the head
gasket is leaking. It's a simple test where blue
liquid is put into a tube and then the engine is run to
see if the blue turns yellow. If it does, you've got
a head gasket leak. In this case the
liquid stayed blue, so the head gasket is fine. So the next time your car starts
overheating, don't get mad. Get under the hood and fix it. And remember, if you've
got any car questions, just visit scottykilmer.com. And I'll answer them as soon
as I get back from this ride.
