[milenko]

hoping this forum is active enough to help with my old lil car, but ive been having overheating issues. its at 127k mileage and ill admit i have not been easy on it. i drove from arkansas to arizona to move in with family and along the way i had overheating issues and had to get the water pump replaced, it barely made it the rest of the way before overheating again. my moms bf flushed and cleaned everything and it was running good for a while until some battery issues, i got a new bat and the issues vanished, but now im back to overheating issues. i cant drive more the. 5 minutes before my temp gauge starts rising rapidly, im great on coolant and nothing seems to be leaking, it still drives fine but after a short period the temp will rise faster than im comfortable. could this be a trans issue, radiator, or thermostat. id like to find an easy fix for my lil car!

 

[Drunken Elvis]

More info would help. Under what conditions does it over heat? Speed? Traffic? Can you hear or see the cooling fans coming on? Overheat....does it boil over? Has any kind of stop-leak product been added to the system?

 

[DrivenDaily]

Along with what @Drunken Elvis recommends, check the thermostat, too.

 

[JJA]

Along with what @Drunken Elvis recommends, check the thermostat, too.

From personal experience it sounds like it’s burning/consuming oil at an accelerated rate (?)

 

[hadron]

Might be an exhaust into coolant issue...head gasket? Sometimes you can determine if this is the case by starting the engine up cold and looking for bubbles. With the Malibu coolant setup you probably can't do this though.

 

[CarJedi_03]

Your mom's bf flushed 'everything' with what? A garden hose? Did he use a detergent? When he replaced the antifreeze, hopefully not just filled it with water, did he use the green 50/50 or GM's fancy dexcool? You cannot mix green coolant with dexcool or you will overheat. However, you can throughly flush out the dexcool and use green coolant, but you gotta know what you're doing. This seems like the most obvious scenario to me. Next i would question the thermostat and water pump job. Either way it's gotta come apart again bud. Dexcool is orange btw.

-CJ3

 

[DrivenDaily]

Yes! Mixing different types of coolant, normally associated with their colors, can turn into gelatin goo from the chemical reaction when they meet and mix.

If you replace the coolant (again), use the right stuff for the types of metals in your cooling system. That's why there are different formulations. If you're not sure what to use, you can Google some info and remember that the internet is full of opinions, but not always facts. If you don't feel like doing all that, then use what GM says to use.

Also, they recommend filling with distilled water to keep the dissolved solids from hard water from forming deposits inside the cooling system.

 

[mortten]

Is coolant being lost? I just replaced lower intake gaskets due to a leak.