Need help - running hot - cant bleed correctly?

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peter.bucker99

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Hey guys

I have a 2004 LS sport (3.9) that Ive owned for a couple of years now. She's been very reliable until now.

The other day the LS over heated. The needle went into the red while my wife was driving it. So i trouble shoot and everything leads to the thermostat. I bought a new thermostat and housing, installed it today. The old thermostat had come apart and was pushing the housing out while trying to unbolt it. It doesnt over heat now but my diagnostic tool says the coolant temp is sitting at between 220 - 240 degrees depending if the heat or the AC is on, during idle.

So I keep trying to bleed it, but I can't get a steady stream from the bleeder at idle. When i rev it coolant will come out, but then stops once at idle again.

The system appears to be pressurized. I loosened the degas cap and pressure and heat came out... All of the plastic components and hoses are within 3 years old, minus the upper radiator hose which i replaced in 2013. None look damaged at all, still looking new.

How should I trouble shoot the issue of not being able to get a steady stream of coolant from the bleeder valve, at idle?

TIA
 
peter.bucker99 said:
... It doesnt over heat now but my diagnostic tool says the coolant temp is sitting at between 220 - 240 degrees depending...
Click to expand...

Wrong, that is overheating.

Did you fill and bleed exactly by the procedure? http://deneau.info/ls/s6x~us~en~file=s6x33004.htm~gen~ref.htm#extract_142
Does the heater work?
Have you tried loosening (be careful, use a towel) the degas bottle cap after it runs hot (210+) to see if the air from the engine will bubble into the degas bottle? If that doesn't work and you bled by the book, you probably still have a cracked/leaking part somewhere. Are you sure all of them were changed three years ago?
Is the engine fan working correctly? It should be pretty loud when it goes over 200.
 
so you have replaced the upper radiator hose, the lower radiator hose, the thermostat housing(in front of thermostat), the coolant crossover tube (behind thermostat) the 90* elbow behind the crossover tube that requires you to either remove the intake manifold or cut the bolts, and the degas bottle? (for some reason i feel like I've forgot a part or two but I don't feel like searching for the thread that tells you every single thing that need to be replaced...)
 
joegr said:
Wrong, that is overheating.

Did you fill and bleed exactly by the procedure? http://deneau.info/ls/s6x~us~en~file=s6x33004.htm~gen~ref.htm#extract_142
Does the heater work?
Have you tried loosening (be careful, use a towel) the degas bottle cap after it runs hot (210+) to see if the air from the engine will bubble into the degas bottle? If that doesn't work and you bled by the book, you probably still have a cracked/leaking part somewhere. Are you sure all of them were changed three years ago?
Is the engine fan working correctly? It should be pretty loud when it goes over 200.
Click to expand...

I did fill by the book. degas bottle first, then topped off at the engine fill cap.

I was following the first gen instructions to bleed. I did not have that link you posted. The only thing I see that is different is for second gen (the link you posted) says to turn the heater to defrost. I was blowing the heat from the top vents only. Would that make a huge impact?

I didnt open the degas tank, but i shined a light on it and i can see bubbles coming into it, but at this point the coolant 220-230 degrees, so i figured it was boiling. It does not bubble when its below 220.

I have the paperwork to the car somewhere from when I purchased it. It did have a lot of work done to the cooling system. However, the thermostat was one of the items that were replaced, and that has already fallen apart. Everything looks good and the hoses are in good shape. They are still springy and no cracks or anything.

The fan works. It was one of the first things I checked after it overheated into the red. It pulls air over the radiator while the car is warming up, and does get very loud as it over heats.

Edit* The heater works too

Thanks for your help
 
1LoudLS said:
so you have replaced the upper radiator hose, the lower radiator hose, the thermostat housing(in front of thermostat), the coolant crossover tube (behind thermostat) the 90* elbow behind the crossover tube that requires you to either remove the intake manifold or cut the bolts, and the degas bottle? (for some reason i feel like I've forgot a part or two but I don't feel like searching for the thread that tells you every single thing that need to be replaced...)
Click to expand...

I did just replace the thermostat and the housing today. The old housing was still good, and new looking, but the thermostat fell apart inside of it.

All the hoses you mentioned still look to be in good shape, still look new, and feel new even. I did not replace them, but comparing them to other vacuum hoses on the car that arent cooling system related they look much newer.

I've replaced the dccv on this one and my 01 three times between the two of them so far, so I guess if it turned out it was actually the degas bottle, I shouldnt be too surprised. It does look alright though.

Thanks for your help, no worries on searching. I'm good at using advanced search operators in google ;) I'll find them now that you mention these and double check.
 
peter.bucker99 said:
I did just replace the thermostat and the housing today. The old housing was still good, and new looking, but the thermostat fell apart inside of it.
Click to expand...

well if when disabling it, the thermostat was falling apart, then no way the housing was still good, because it holds the thermostat together with little ears, when the plastic that is used in all of these parts gets too old, they get super brittle and start crumbling, the little ears are the weakest parts so they break off first causing the thermostat to no longer be held together right.

peter.bucker99 said:
All the hoses you mentioned still look to be in good shape, still look new, and feel new even. I did not replace them, but comparing them to other vacuum hoses on the car that arent cooling system related they look much newer.
Click to expand...

one of the biggest problems is that all of the pieces have the same life span, so once one part breaks, they rest have reached their limits as well and will also start to fail either at the same time or in a very short time period. (usually you're very lucks if another one doesn't fall apart just from you taking other parts near it off!)

another issue is that as these parts age, they don't change in appearance, when the entire end of my coolant outlet pipe blew off, the rest of the part looks just the same as the new part going in other than being dirty and having a huge hole in it. same with the thermostat housing that fell apart in my hands once it was removed. then when the upper radiator hose cracked spraying coolant out, even seeing the spray coming from the part, I could not see anything wrong just by looking at it, the crack was so small it could barely be seen.

peter.bucker99 said:
so I guess if it turned out it was actually the degas bottle, I shouldnt be too surprised. It does look alright though.
Click to expand...
was this part removed? if not there is no way to tell if it is find since its buried so deep behind stuff. there have been a lot of people who swear that their Degas was/looked fine, only to not believe what they saw once it was removed.


long story short, I'm sure that any parts that were replaced 3 years ago or less are fine, but if any of them ore original then they are highly suspect, I would also suspect any parts that were replaced that were not OEM/Motorcraft parts.
 
Here's some pics of the thermostat. It literally came out in pieces. The plastic clips in the housing that secure the thermostat in the housing were still there.

I'm going to drain the coolant again and take the degas bottle off in a few and see what its looking like. There's no coolant leaking out of the system I am confident about that.

This LS has about 138k on it. The motor still runs great so if I have to take the whole system apart I'm going to. Its my favorite car I've ever owned.

I really appreciate you guys taking the time to help me out with this.

uploadfromtaptalk1435587423194.jpguploadfromtaptalk1435587619030.jpg

uploadfromtaptalk1435587423194.jpg


uploadfromtaptalk1435587619030.jpg
 
1LoudLS said:
well if when disabling it, the thermostat was falling apart, then no way the housing was still good, because it holds the thermostat together with little ears, when the plastic that is used in all of these parts gets too old, they get super brittle and start crumbling, the little ears are the weakest parts so they break off first causing the thermostat to no longer be held together right.



one of the biggest problems is that all of the pieces have the same life span, so once one part breaks, they rest have reached their limits as well and will also start to fail either at the same time or in a very short time period. (usually you're very lucks if another one doesn't fall apart just from you taking other parts near it off!)

another issue is that as these parts age, they don't change in appearance, when the entire end of my coolant outlet pipe blew off, the rest of the part looks just the same as the new part going in other than being dirty and having a huge hole in it. same with the thermostat housing that fell apart in my hands once it was removed. then when the upper radiator hose cracked spraying coolant out, even seeing the spray coming from the part, I could not see anything wrong just by looking at it, the crack was so small it could barely be seen.


was this part removed? if not there is no way to tell if it is find since its buried so deep behind stuff. there have been a lot of people who swear that their Degas was/looked fine, only to not believe what they saw once it was removed.


long story short, I'm sure that any parts that were replaced 3 years ago or less are fine, but if any of them ore original then they are highly suspect, I would also suspect any parts that were replaced that were not OEM/Motorcraft parts.
Click to expand...

I'm going to find the paperwork and double check but I do believe the degas bottle was replaced at some podunk shop in newport news, va lol. It probably wasnt motorcraft.

When my upper radiator hose cracked I could not see the crack either. Good point.

I guess my biggest worry at this point is exhaust gasses in the cooling system since it overheated 100% in the red. The coolant was literally at a rolling boil.
 
Head-gasket failure is very, very rare in this engine. The failsafe cooling usually saves it. That thermostat looks like it was assembled incorrectly. Note that the thermostat is a four piece assembly (looks like you have five pieces).
http://deneau.info/ls/s6x~us~en~file=s6x33007.htm~gen~ref.htm

If you have a non-Ford degas bottle, you will need to replace it and the cap.

You can spend a few weeks chasing this problem to figure out what they didn't replace and hope that you don't do damage to the engine, or you could just get all the plastic parts and replace them now. You should also replace the throttle body heater hoses. (I've seen a few of those fail too, one on my 06.)
 
That thermostat came with the car! I was comparing it to the new one and it did not look like the correct thermostat. The big spring was much longer than the one I just put in from ford.

I guess I'll just change the whole lot of plastic components. I'm just not one to throw parts at a car and the problem not be fixed. I do recall a post by you, joegr, about a DCCV. You said "it's either bad, going bad, or will go bad." So even if the plastic cooling parts arent bad, I can sleep at night knowing they were going bad lol

Thanks for the heads up on the throttle body heater hoses. I'll snag those too.

Whats another good part site other than rockauto?

Thanks guys
 
On a side note, looking in the coolant that was drained from the radiator I'm noticing some metallic and copper looking flakes in it. I'm assuming probably from the thermostat that fell apart.
 
I would say for sure it looks like your thermostat was put together incorrectly as the part that is still in there is in there backwards and it is supposed to hold all of the other pieces in there...

do you think you might have also assembled the new one incorrectly?

it should look like this assembled
View attachment 828462368
 
The new one looked just like that. I noobed up and bought the housing with the thermostat already installed.

I will admit that I've been battling myself as to if the new one is functioning properly.

I think that it is and that there is a leak somewhere in the system that is allowing air in. I've bled it several times now and I cannot get a steady stream at idle from the bleeder with the heater on max and defrost...

Upon further inspection the degas bottle is yellowed. It doesn't look that great anymore now that I took everything off and really got a good look at it.

Thanks for your help and the pic! Its much appreciated.

uploadfromtaptalk1435619118964.jpg

uploadfromtaptalk1435619118964.jpg
 
I still cant believe your thermostat was put in incorrectly and went that long with out a problem... lol


Did it seem to take a long time before the engine would reach operating temperature?

I would think that it would constantly either be constantly letting too much water flowing through or constantly not letting enough water through...
 
Yeah I did have a problem with that when it got really cold out. I live in virginia right on the ocean so it doesn't drop below 40 too often right in my locality. I got the code twice because i actually had to go somewhere first thing in the morning on a cold day. It just cleared it self the same day.

I ride around in my vehicles with my code scanner and monitor the coolant temp, o2 sensors etc. I haven't been driving the second gen much lately. My wife has so it got by me. But I've never had a problem with it overheating which confirms there's something else going on.

I ordered the degas bottle and the rest of the plastic cooling components minus the upper and lower rad hoses.

I'm betting you were right - degas bottle will fix it
 
i hope you didn't order the dorman bottle...

its known to have trouble lasting very long, also at least a couple of times they have been bad out of the box!

make sure you also order a new cap too
 
^ Yup, Yup, seems they all develop cracks at the back/side and near bottom of the bottle, which of course is so far and tight onto the firewall, you can't tell from looking at front or on top. (plus hood cowl in the way)

attachment.jpg


attachment.jpg


Even while it's out and all dirty it's somewhat difficult to spot, rinse it off with some soap and hold it up against or near a light and you'll see the hair line cracks.

As we all know, one dead give away is when it's leaking a small puddle directly behind the front drivers side wheel. Overheating or not.
 
I didn't order the bottle from rockauto because they didn't have motorcraft!

Do you guys remember if before you replaced the degas bottle you could not get a steady stream from the bleeder at idle with the heat on max?

Ive inspected repeatedly for coolant leaks. There's none. But there's obviously an air leak since I can't get a steady stream from the bleeder at idle with the heat on? My degas cap looks really old. I bet someone replaced the bottle but not the cap. And its like 7 bucks lol
 
peter.bucker99 said:
I didn't order the bottle from rockauto because they didn't have motorcraft!

Do you guys remember if before you replaced the degas bottle you could not get a steady stream from the bleeder at idle with the heat on max?

Ive inspected repeatedly for coolant leaks. There's none. But there's obviously an air leak since I can't get a steady stream from the bleeder at idle with the heat on? My degas cap looks really old. I bet someone replaced the bottle but not the cap. And its like 7 bucks lol
Click to expand...

Mine did not bleed properly through the top bleeder when my DCCV was stuck shut. That all got turned around when I replaced the valve. After losing my engine and replacing it recently, it happened again, but that problem was due to the water pump having failed and inadvertantly being transferred to the replacement engine because it was only 5 years old and had a lifetime warranty. Perhaps your auxiliary water pump has failed.
 
Thanks for the response milehighmickey. I do know my dccv is working. I just replaced it last month with a motocraft replacement and my heat/AC both work great.

I'll check into the water pumps too. Probably time to replace them anyway. The coolant is already drained out so I'll just pop them out and have a look.

I was thinking the metallic flakes in the coolant I drained off the first time could have come from a water pump that's falling apart. Its definitely worth investigation at this age and mileage
 
The engine water pump seems to be pretty reliable and long-lived, however, in your case there is the very slim possibility that a piece of the thermostat made it into the pump and did damage. (The coolant flow is from the pump to the thermostat then to the radiator, but a part could fall backwards from the thermostat directly into the water pump while the engine was off. ) If you remove it to check, you will at least need a need water pump gasket. If you decide to replace it (I would only use Motorcraft), then the gasket comes with the new pump.

Aux pump failures are a little less rare, but not common. Since you have heat at idle, I'd leave the aux pump alone unless you see any residue that would indicate it is leaking.
 
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