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Overheating, heater blowing cold air, leaking coolant

32K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  pbrymer 
#1 ·
My 2006 Charger R/T has had a slight coolant leak for a while now. I've had the dealer look at it twice. The first time, they addressed the transmission, thinking it was leaking the fluid as it is also red. The second time, they said they could not find a leak. Now, with 97,000 miles, my heater will sometimes blow only cold air, my reservoir for coolant is very low, the car overheats causing the fan to turn on to lower the temperature of the car. I've looked at the thermostat connection point under the hood, and it shows signs of leakage.

My neighbor thinks I may have an internal leak in the engine, just like he had with his Ram (non hemi) recently. He needed an engine rebuild.

Does anyone have an opinion on my symptoms?

Going to the dealer on Tuesday.
 
#2 ·
If it looks wet around the thermostat housing, you must be leaking there. Your heater core probably isn't getting the flow it needs to produce hot air because your cooling system isn't holding the pressure they are designed to. Keep that radiator full until they look at it Tuesday. Good luck at the shop.
 
#3 ·
99% chance your water pump is out.

In the old days, on some cars if the thermostat fails in the closed position it will overheat and not circulate water through the heater core.

DO NOT DRIVE THIS CAR!

If the water pump is out, you will damage the engine. It may not be obvious today that any damage was done, but 5,000~~15,000 miles from now you will blow a head gasket...........or worse DROP A VALVE SEAT!

If you have already overheated the engine it may be too late. After reading all the horror stories of blown head gasets and dropped valve seats I plan to replace my water pump and hoses every 50K.

These things have way too many hoses. I plan to fabricate and rerout all the small hoses using stainless steel tubing.
 
#4 ·
For clarity:

The car is dripping fluid very slowly, over months.
The car heats to 225 degrees and the fan turns on quite often to cool the car back to 190-200. It has not overheated. This happens often now whereby it did not before.
There are stains outside the thermostat housing, indicating secretion of fluids, but none are visible when I look.
The heater will sometimes only blow cold air, but most of the time works as designed.

I don't know the symptoms of a water pump failure, so I will bring that up at the dealership.
 
#6 ·
I'm actually having the same symptoms as you donald, a while ago at 30k miles i had these things happen and i took it in to find it was a split radiator and luckily my warranty covered it because it was almost $1300 in parts n labor. Now it's happening again, i took it into the dealership and they said it's definitely not leaking anywhere they checked, just that it was extremely low on coolant but they filled it back up and it was fine.

Now, about a month later, heats cold again and I'm below the "min" line on coolant (im at a little over 50k miles now). So either it's leaking, or a gremlin is sipping my stuff out through a straw at night. Luckily its not my DD, and when i do drive it, its not a long trip usually.

Coming up on the 11th I'm gettin my new cam installed so we're gonna take a look at it, but from what I've heard from asking others about it theres a lot of guys that just refill their coolant every couple of months.
 
#8 ·
Follow the top radiator hose from the radiator to the engine block. Where the hose is attached is to the engine block there will be a hose connector secured to the block with 2 bolts. Remove those 2 bolts and pull the hose connector off and the T-stat will be sitting under it.
 
#10 ·
To guarantee a no leak seal, I use RTV silicone. I've even used the cheap wal-mart 100% silicone that you caulk your windows with with 100% success.

If you ever wondered why you rarely ever see a Japanese engine leak oil it's because they have no gaskets. I found that out the first time I tore apart a Miss-A-***** engine back in 1989. It took me over an hour to pry the oil pan off. The only gaskets on that entire engine were the head gasket and exhaust manifold gasket. Everything else was silicone.

I've been using silicone ever since then and have had zero leaks in over 20 years.

A little bit goes a long ways. A secret to my success with silicone is to put on one paper thin layer and let it dry. Then put on a second thicker layer (but still thin) and let it get tacky before you snug it down. If I'm not rushed for time, I only snug the bolts down. Then I come back 4 hours (or more) later and torque the bolts/nuts to spec.
 
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