No heat and out of ideas

Howdy all, joined for this question as im counting the days till the snow flies.

Quick bacground on me, owned anout a dozen jeeps from cj5 to to 2004 grands. My last serious wheeler was a samurai i built over a few years to go where my jeeps were too big. Currently working on a tracker on toys destined for 35'samd other goodies. Ive been looking at toyotas for a few years but price and needs never matched up.

However i sold my last jeep and my mustang is going to make for a bad hunting vehicle and trail beater.

Then a few days ago a client of mine needed a little help with their kid. They were moving him out of state and the only thing he owned was a 96 tacoma. No title so he planned to scrap it. Anyways, after talking with his folks for a bit he got title issued and i doubled his scrap price.

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Tires were nothing but a blowout surounded by almost see through rubber. So i pulled my rollers wheels which are marginally safer and look better. Then ordered a set of 31s that will hopefully be here this week.



4cyl, not sure which one though.

10 kinds of gross inside, but most importantly he says the heater core is plugged, so no heat.

So i pulled the heater lines to flush and was surprised that clear water flowed immediately at full force. Figured then it was an airlock. Topped of the rad, inclined the front and let it run. No heat.

Then moved on to the lines themselves, engine side of the valve was hot, truck side wasnt, so i figured broken valve. I pulled the lines today and its clear and working.

So figure blockage in the block, backflush it and shoot water out of the radiator so its clear. But leaving the line open and o coolant is flowing. Im guessing the heat i felt yesterday was just steam/radiant from the engine running.

My only thought at this point is something screwy with the water pump. But im not seeing any leaks on the concrete, truck hits normal temp and stays, and no steam from the tailpipe that id guess a gasket failure.

Being that im not familiar with the engine the pump is just my current guess and im looking for some more experienced opinions before i start throwing parts at it.

 

After a few minutes of driving, does the temp gauge reach the middle or stay cold? If it stays cold, most likely the thermostat is stuck open.

 

Yep. Thermostats are designed to fail open, meaning when they do fail they fail so that the thermostat does not close. Thermostats are closed until the water temp in the block reaches the thermostat temp. Most of them are 195 degrees. When the thermostat stays open the motor will take forever to run up to temp. Replace the thermostat and you should be okay.

 

Did you flush the heater core? Is the valve on the heater hose functioning? There's a small valve that allows coolant to flow through the heater core.

 

Thermostat and temp works correctly, flushed the core and the valve is operating. There's no fluid running through the lines even after the thermostat opens up.

 

Ahhhhh so you've gt a block somewhere. Remove thermostat and flush system with pressure washer every direction possible?

 

I decided to put in a new thermostat a backflush t in the heater line and a chemical flush. I got the backflush done, found the petcock valve is busted off and 1 of the nuts on the thermostat housing is rounded off its also a 13mm instead of a 12 so im not the first person to be tinkering here.

So a flushed as well as i could and pulled the bottom hose, which kicked a lot of rust out, and put the chemical in. Ill run it for a few days while i try to find my nut easy out type set and swap the thermostat. Hopefully ill start seeing some heat soon.

Gotta love new projects

 

And the saga deepens. I ran the flush for afew hours and dumped some nastiness out of the rad and then flushed every direction i could. I got the rounded nut off and found surprisingly that there was no thermostat. So i figure the sender/gauge has been lying all along. Flush for a while longer, back together with a new tstat and cap and off for a test run. Temp gauge rises to almost H which kind of makes sense if the sender is waaaay off.

Anyway kick on the heater and yay! there's heat. Then theres no heat. Then theres heat etc. so thats weird.

Get back from the run and hear boiling under the hood. Check that and find all kinds of pressure being relieved theough the radiator overflow. And all the pieces snap into place.

At some point someone decided the best way to fix a bad headgasket was to remove the thermostat. So no overheating but enough heat to show normal on the dash, and constant air lock through the core so no heat. And where the gasket has failed luckily its not letting water into the exhaust so no tell-tale smoke and no water i the oil (still clear and clean).

So at least I believe ive id'd the problem. Its definitely not where i thought id end up though.