Overheating Engine

[Stevieb08]

My hawkeye wrx sti spec D has been overheating the past week. It did it once about a year ago, then a few months ago and now a couple times a week. At the weekend I decided to investigate and removed the thermostat completely as it seemed to be sticking. The car ran fine other than warming up slowly so determined that to be the issue.

New thermostat in last night and the car overheated again on the way to work this morning, although not as bad as before. Could it be the orientation of the thermostat? Or incorrect fitting? I didn't see what orientation it was when it came out. Put it in with the little hole at the top so spring at the bottom.

[Tidgy]

With it being 2.5 i'd get a sniff test done asap and go from there. may well not be headgasket, but its a cheap test as a start point before you go chasing things round the engine bay.

[coldcuppatea]

Definitely go get a sniff or compression test. My Spec D seemed to run fine most of the time with random moments of overheating.

 

Bear in mind that the dashboard water temp gauge is rubbish btw. I was able to watch my car overheat quite significantly via OBD before the dashboard needle would move at all.

 

I really hope it's not head gasket failure for you but you want to get it ruled out without guesswork before you do any serious damage to the engine.

 

How many miles on it out of interest?

 

 

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[Stevieb08]

18 hours ago, coldcuppatea said:

How many miles on it out of interest?

75000 roughly but it already had a head gasket change at 35k with the previous owner.

Update is that it only overheats when the oil temp gets to around 96'C according to my defi's

[coldcuppatea]

 

Does it do it when driving or on idle? I could drive mine quite hard and not see any overheating, but if I left it idling for a few minutes, the temperature would go through the roof.

 

 

Was the engine rebuilt after the first HG change, or was it just a replacement gasket?

 

[Stevieb08]

Just when driving as oil temp doesn't get hot enough when idling. Last night after spending an hour or so trying to bleed all the air out i took it out and hit the right hand side of the speedo a few times and it was fine, until the oil temp got up to 95'c ish when it rapidly overheated.

 

As for the engine rebuild I can't remember, would have to look through the service history again to check.

[coldcuppatea]

I had a few other head gasket failure symptoms such as bubbles occasionally appearing in the coolant expansion tank and small but regular drops in the coolant level. Never saw any noticeable coolant in oil symptoms though.

 

 

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