Overheating in long drive

[MaximaGuy]

There are a couple of things you could do,

a) Drain the radiator, it should drain in one shot if the radiator cap is open and bottom drain is opened. It should drain real fast

If this doesn't happen and the flow is not continuous you have a clogged radiator. I had one in my maxima and would have overheating when going uphill and it is worth looking into.

 

[Rohan]

Originally Posted By: MaximaGuy
There are a couple of things you could do,

a) Drain the radiator, it should drain in one shot if the radiator cap is open and bottom drain is opened. It should drain real fast

If this doesn't happen and the flow is not continuous you have a clogged radiator. I had one in my maxima and would have overheating when going uphill and it is worth looking into.


The draining process was good. Mine is driving on flat road after 30 minutes it will overheat but I still don't get warm air at all inside the car with heater on.

 

[Nick1994]

Putting the garden hose into the radiator isn't going to flush it. Pull off the bottom radiator hose and the top one and stick the hose in the top hose and watch it come out the other side and observe what happens.

You likely have either a clogged radiator or a bad thermostat. My moms car had a bad thermostat last month and sometimes it didn't warm up a lot and sometimes it overheated and then it finally stuck closed and she overheated it and blew the head gasket. You don't want to do that.

It's possible the water pump is bad and the impeller inside isn't working correctly.

Another thing is that (as said before) either the blend door doesn't work correctly in the dash or the heater core is plugged and it doesn't allow the heater to work.

Either start replacing parts and learning how to do it yourself so it'll be cheap or find a good independent mechanic to look at it and NOT a quick lube shop like Brake Masters or Jiffy Lube.

 

[MaximaGuy]

Rohan: Since you have 180K off the thermostat and radiator, it may be wise to just replace them and flush completely, they are not expensive.

Let me tell you I took my [censored] maxima to a dealership and a private shop and neither concluded it was a clogged radiator. It was my hunch that if I had already spent 1K "diagnosing" the culprit, what would be lost if I spent another $100 on a new radiator. That was it.!!

Thermostats do go bad but in my case it was just fine until I traded it at 200K.

 

[MaximaGuy]

Forgot to mention and I am sure you are aware once pressurized both the rubber lines MUST be rock hard meaning there is no air in the closed loop system. If not then there is air trapped in the system, you can either burp the system keeping the radiator cap off for 20 min or find the bleeder screw (in the 3L engine it was on the hot side right below the throttle body rubber hose).

 

[Rohan]

Originally Posted By: MaximaGuy
Rohan: Since you have 180K off the thermostat and radiator, it may be wise to just replace them and flush completely, they are not expensive.

Let me tell you I took my [censored] maxima to a dealership and a private shop and neither concluded it was a clogged radiator. It was my hunch that if I had already spent 1K "diagnosing" the culprit, what would be lost if I spent another $100 on a new radiator. That was it.!!

Thermostats do go bad but in my case it was just fine until I traded it at 200K.


I have 103,000 miles on engine and transmission have 180k miles.

 

[Rohan]

MaximaGuy: can you tell me where's heater core is located? If you provide a picture it will be better for me and remember this is 3.5Liter engine.

I bleed the system good let the car run more then 30 minutes with heater on but no hot air coming out from the air vent.

 

[MaximaGuy]

The heater core is usually in most cases behind the stero system. It is a PITA to get to, have your checked the knobs and dials, I would suspect that would be the culprit.

 

[Rohan]

Quick question can I put radiator flush addictive in it?

 

[Rohan]

Originally Posted By: MaximaGuy
The heater core is usually in most cases behind the stero system. It is a PITA to get to, have your checked the knobs and dials, I would suspect that would be the culprit.


Okay I'm not going to do that lol. But I can tell you that my in dash was damage when car got stolen. I think it may be the issue with the button and all that. Any diagram that I can look or how to test it?

 

[MaximaGuy]

Originally Posted By: Rohan
Quick question can I put radiator flush addictive in it?


No, it is going to move the problem from the radiator into the block which will be harder to flush out.

If you monkeyed with coolants like the way I did on my Maxima, then the culprit is a partially clogged radiator. When you said the flow was fine, what is your reference point. Check up on youtube on a radiator drain and count the sec it takes to get 90% out, it should be less than 10s. If yours' isn't draining quickly you have a partially clogged radiator.

Diagnosing a partially clogged radiator is virtually impossible.

 

[MaximaGuy]

Diagnosing a partially clogged radiator is virtually impossible to a naked eye and it will take you back by 500 bucks if you went to the dealer/independent shop, they don't know a jackassss about diagnosing a partially clogged radiator. They are there to "diagnose" and not recreate the failure and take $140 for that exercise.

 

[chrisri]

Rohan, heater core rarely gets clogged. Are you absolutely sure you bleed the system correctly?. Some cars are rather tricky.

 

[Rohan]

Ok today I drain the system again and fill back up with the water. After that I bleed the system for 45 minutes and I got little heat coming from the vent but not a lot warm air. How do I get rid of the antifreeze that is inside the cooling system? After 30 minutes I saw green antifreeze coming top of the radiator.

I bleed the system by jacking up the car this mean passenger tire off the ground and start the car with radiator cap of.

 

[Rohan]

Tomorrow I'm thinking of putting unvirseal orielly radiator fuild in it 50/50 but I want to clean out the old radiator fuild that is coming up after 30 minutes of car running with radiator cap off.

 

[Vikas]

The amount of internal heat that you are getting does NOT depend upon the type of fluid that is in the system. You either have a clog in your heater core or you have air in the system.

Look in the firewall. Find two hoses going to the heater. Flush the heater via those two connections. Flush them in both the directions. Then make sure all the air is purged from the system. Some cars are absolute pain to do that. Before giving up, purchase $35 Leslie SpillFree Funnel to purge the air. This will get you heat inside the cabin.

It may or may not fix your engine overheat after 30 minutes of highway driving.

Or you could follow everybody else's advice and just keep on swapping parts after parts. Something will eventually fix it! BITOG audience loves part cannon!

 

[KrisZ]

+1000 Vikas.

If there is a problem with overheating, the first order of business is to ensure the entire cooling system works as it should. Once that is done and the problem persists, further diagnosis has to be done.

 

[Rohan]

Can someone tell me that two hoses that going to the firewall isn't for this car is located inside the cabin or located inside the engine firewall? 2004 Nissan Maxima

 

[Vikas]

Take few pictures and post it here. There should be two heater hoses going through the firewall. Purchase a heater hose from your local auto place to know how it looks like.

I am talking about opening the hood and looking at the firewall. The hoses will be next to each other separated by by no more than couple of inches. And be careful, those might be sitting on the plastic pipe and if you manhandle, it will break on you, causing you untold misery. Otherwise, find their other end which sould be entering somewhere in the engine coolant circuit and those end sould be plugged in to metal nipple which should be lot more sturdy. The access to that end will be difficult but you have to choose your poison correctly.

 

[Vikas]

I don't know how to tell you if your heater controls are not working or the actually heater is not working. Are those manual controls or electronic controls? The heating system could have a blend door, coolant control valve. Trying to figure out if there is a fault in there is going to be difficult over the internet. Your best bet is to start ruling out the simple stuff one at a time and to do this with a methodical approach. Don't do it like a fish flailing in air.

You have shown ability to do the difficult part aka doing the actual wrenching on the car. If you do it with little bit of smarts and logic, you should be able to find the cause and then fix it.