Quote:
Originally Posted by Xist
Supposedly we never got below freezing last year, but it would be easy to drain the radiator and replace with 50/50. So, one of these and two hose clamps?
Coolant has a higher boiling point than water. At least it keeps getting cooler outside! |
I did not need to purchase clamps, I just used the ones on the hoses going to the heater core. Removing those hoses was incredibly difficult because the clamps pointed downward, but I could not do much with normal pliers. I tried finding longer pliers, but Home Depot only had needlenose pliers and I was concerned those would bend the clamps, but 90° needlenose pliers should have worked perfectly. The only long pliers I found were 45° behemoths. I thought they would be great because I could pull the hoses from an angle and have the drip pan underneath, but there was not nearly any room for that. I found some large pliers that were not as long as I wanted, but still difficult to maneuver in there.
Curiously, I had especial trouble with the passenger-side hose. It was short, connected to the bracket, with a cable that seemed to open a valve in the heater core. It was easy to remove the hose from there. Then the shorter hose came out. It seemed to take forever, but coupling the two hoses was easy.
I have not tested pressure yet.
A friend from Church told me to run the AC and see if both fans came on. Only the condenser fan ran. I thought I was finally okay to drive last week (before I finally bypassed the heater core) and Chorizo drove forty miles on the highway perfectly, even running the air conditioning the last several miles, to see how hot the engine would get, and if the cooling fan would run.
It didn't.
The temperature was fine, though.
The next client was several miles away, 45 MPH speed limit, and light traffic. Everything was fine until the mom rescheduled.
Then my car overheated. My phone died, too.
I went back to driving my Accord, but I still have not found a resonator. I have everything else.
I thought the thermostat was bad, but I had not realized how slightly they opened. I replaced it with a new one from the dealer anyway.
I used test wires to run the fan directly from the battery. I bypassed the fan switch with a paperclip and it ran. I checked all of the fuses with a tester and they are good. I followed the instructions in this video and learned my new test wires were already bad:
The relay clicked and my multimeter showed 0.5 Ω. In the video, the good one was 0.01 Ω and the bad one was 1Ω.
I bought a new one.
It was also 0.5 Ω.
The friend told me to make sure the relay box is putting out 12v. A mechanic on YouTube said you cannot put probes into the relay slots and suggested wrapping wires around each connector, securing them with electrical tape, and then using your multimeter on the wires.
My multimeter showed 0.
I was able to put my probes into the slots, but my multimeter still showed 0.
When I drained the coolant before replacing the thermostat I siphoned it out of the overflow tank, which was surprisingly full. I did that the hard way, the tank just slides out. I read the overflow tank fills when the engine overheats. I wonder how much of my missing coolant has gone there, but where has the rest gone?