2003 3.1l overheat with thermostat removed

After watching a couple LIM videos I'm not intimidated by the job. Money is tight, so a whole job is a little expensive this check and next.

That oil sealing blue devil? I'm so frigging impressed. I was putting 2 quarts of oil in the car every 2-3 days, now nothing.

Just idled the car for 35 minutes, the temp stayed at 156, heat blowing till I noticed I had the a/c on, turned off the ac and the car blew hotter and the temp went up to 186 in the span of the remaining 10 minutes. I took it for a 1 mile test drive, with a/c on and it never went above 186.8. Right now I've been idling after the drive in my driveway for about 5-6 minutes, not above the 186

The blue devil is hard to beat, if it doesn't work you get your money back. So basically if my car loses coolant, I get my $27 back. Money well spent.

Of course he would have disowned me for that Lol. Give me the I taught you better than that and talked to me "until I'm blue in the face." Speech.

you got the little bottle. i got the large one cause its all they had, but through advance auto on line i got it cheaper.

i forgot about the money back guarantee. :th_mischievious: but then again it works.

jeff this stuff is not a sludge or slurry or pellets. its just liquid. stuffs come a long way from the black tar pellets lol

Sounds like it. After the first couple of fails I swore off stop leak of any kind. Hopefully I never need it but I'll be a little more open minded about it now.

i didnt even think about for 20 years lol then this pos engine i had has bubbles in the rad and kept blowing coolant out the over flow bottle. added blue devil and i stopped loosing coolant, over flow acted normal too.

i took the heads off it too, the gaskets looked ok, so im thinking it had a crack in the heads coolant jacket or something.

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Originally Posted by J57ltr

Of course he would have disowned me for that Lol. Give me the I taught you better than that and talked to me "until I'm blue devil in the face." Speech.

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fixed it

mechanic in a bottle FTW !!!

been riding around a bottle of blue devil power steering stop leak in the trunk for 6 months...sooner or later i'm gonna try it.

I'm impressed with the stuff. I took the car to work, drove on the freeway 7 ish miles at 70mph. Temp stayed at 176-186 (don't remember I was rushing to work.) Off the freeway I hit pretty good (awful) stop and go traffic for 15 minutes. Temp never went higher than 206.

Give yourself a whole day to do the LIM. Don't do it if you have to go to work or something later in the day. That way if things don't go according to plan or you break something, you have plenty of time resolve the issue. YouTube has tons of great 3.1L and 3.4L LIM gasket videos. The gasket set, if it's by Fel-Pro, is probably $70 tops. Find it on Amazon or something, it will be cheaper. If all gaskets are original, you'll need upper intake gaskets too. That set costs maybe $40 or $50. That set should include other o-rings for certain tubes and hoses. I would save up maybe $150 for this job (may seem like a lot, but just think of what it'd be at a repair shop), especially if every gasket needs to be changed. I'm not 100% on these amounts, this is just what I would expect. You also need to buy coolant and possibly change your oil? I know on the 3.8L if you spilled coolant into the valley, you had to flush it out with oil and do an oil change. I'm not sure it's the same for this engine?

The lim is a pretty PITA job on the 3100... You will definitely NEED the rocker arm tool, trust me! Do your research first because you'll want to have everything handy.

Used the stop leak on the 3100 knowing what a PITA it was to take it apart for the lim job (yes, lazy), kept it sealed until the front cover started leaking... Pin hole leak at first that leaked just enough to burn off without finding anything wet, but losing coolant. So thought it was burning it or head gasket. But then the front cover gasket really gave out and was easy to find the problem. Lol... So the moral of the story is try and find the leak, positively, where it is from. Clean the engine and let it dry, pressure test collant sys, compression test cylinders (head gaskets) and whatnot. If you find its the front cover and decide to do the job, you'll need the right tool for the balancer pulley... Another PITA... A day for each, or a nice weekend for both at same time. And yes, if you really let the thing overheat, the heads on 3100 are known to warp, but that'll show itself pretty fast. If you used the stop leak, and fix the lim or cover, I would flush the system pretty good and replace coolant getting rid of Dex crap. Change the thermostat too while it's all apart because that too is a PITA to change later...

anyways, good luck!
: )

Will someone explain to me why you would need a rocker arm tool, as I have done about 5 of the 3.1 and 3.4 LIM jobs and didn't use a rocker arm tool for nary a one of them. The only special tool I needed was a torque wrench and an angle torque gauge.

Jeff

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Originally Posted by J57ltr

Will someone explain to me why you would need a rocker arm tool, as I have done about 5 of the 3.1 and 3.4 LIM jobs and didn't use a rocker arm tool for nary a one of them. The only special tool I needed was a torque wrench and an angle torque gauge.

Jeff

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Because with the tool, you do NOT have to remove the rocker arms, lossen or otherwise, no need to retorque... It allows you to compress the valve spring and remove the push rods thereby making it a much easier job eliminating the need to do unneeded extra work. ; )

To each his own...

Well I wish I had known. I will probably never do another one again, but I'll know now.

Jeff

Taking the bolt off and loosing the rocker arms don't seem that bad. They're just more bolts that need to be tightened down.

Yeah the rocker arm tool just makes the job easier. I've done 3 of them without and did one with, will never do it without it again.

Sent from A Galaxy Far Far Away

I kind of want to do one, just to see what it's like and to have the experience. I think it would be fun.

Hey all I just wanted to update you. A couple days of cycles to and from work and I finally had my car shoot up to 240 and I thought i barely got it in to work. I didnt have time to check for leaks or anything I had to run in to work. (My job is an OTR driving job) I came back two days later, and the first thing I did was open my hood, open my radiator, run the car loosen the air burpers and grab a gallon of water. Let me tell you, I was very, very surprised. The system wouldnt take but a sip of water from the gallon! I mean barely any water at all! It ran good! I surmise that maybe the overheating was caused by an air bubble.

Now the weird part.

Took it to work, nary a worry. Car sat for 4 days. Came back home, popped open the hood to check the system...had to pour a gallon in. It had no issue on the way or anything. Where it lost the water i have no clue. I kinda think it evaporated or something, I really dont know.

Another couple of days have gone by and I checked the system again, and nothing is missing. Ive drove the car for about 150 miles with the temp gauge never going over 193 at the worst and shooting down to 183-173 generally. Oil is fine diddly Ine.

I took it in a cross town, through the las vegas stop light to stop light strip ride today and actually at the start of my ride the car came up with 2 codes. Catalytic effieciency down in bank 1 and thermostat temperature too low. I cleared them and they havnt come on. I kinda think they were both related to the car running so cold, but it handled and drove excellently the whole way.