Sigh.. Something wrong with my engine. Please help asap!!

SoulSoak

SoulSoak

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Okay, so... I just got done installing my subs and amp in my 2003 Lincoln LS and now I got a problem that just decided to occur.

I drive to the grocery store to grab few things. On my way back home (which is only about 1/2 mile), I get to my house and notice my engine temp is at 3/4 hot. So I turn the car off, pop the hood, and get out.

I open the hood and notice a noise that sounds like an electric motor running, like a whining noise.(The car is off) And also I heard a liquid noise, like possibly coolant traveling or something. (No idea, trying to describe the best I can, I'm not incredibly mechanicaly inclined). This motor/liquid noise occurred for maybe 5 minutes while the car was off, and now the noise stopped.

Any opinions or advice or diagnostic ideas to figure out the problem please help me asap !! Thanks guys.
 
Personally I would guess the thermostat stuck/failed but I don't know.
 
UPDATE

First let me start by saying sorry, I don't intend on being the forum newbie that annoys the hell out of everyone by asking questions about topics that have been covered already once or numerous times. I just finally got my Lincoln LS that I've dreamed about for 5 years and I know this is a great forum to with a good helpful community. Anyhow, the update..

I just took my LS for a drive, I'm about 4 miles from home parked on side of road as we speak. The car ran great, no overheating. As I pulled over, I popped the hood and got out of the car(leaving it running) and listened to the engine. Sounds good, no abnormal sounds. No odd head sounds etc. So I turned the car off(having it been idleing 2minutes). Temp gauge still normal. No leaking or drops under car and I've been sitting 10 minutes while making this post.

Now, on my previous trip to the store.. maybe this is common with these cars.. I don't know. But The drive to the store is about half a mile, maybe less. The fastest the car gets to is about 45mph for maybe 20 seconds. Because there are several 4-way stops. So that driving was strictly stop/go constant 1k-3k rpm range without much air going into radiator. I don't know if it's common for these cars to get warmer if they are driven in that manor or not. Like I stated previously, when I arrived at home and looked at the temp gauge after parking, it was at 3/4... for all I know it may have never proceeded to ge any warmer if I left it running.

So did my car overheat technically? No. But I'm just posting what happened because maybe one of you knows if this is something common, or did I get lucky and catch it before it overheated and now I can address the situation if it's something uncommon or wrong/malfunctioning.

Abou to start her up and drive back home. I will post with further info/updates. Thank you guys for listening and helping, much appreciated and God bless.
 
Anytime the gauge is reading more than halfway - the car is 'overheating'. Try bleeding the cooling system and go from there. Likely you have a failed or failing degas bottle.
 
Just got home from the drive. Everything ran great and sounds good. Once I arrived at home I parked the car and let it idle 5 minutes. Temp gauge was horizontal and normal the entire time. *shrugs shoulders* No idea what happened earlier today when I came back from the store. Hopefully it never does it again, but I will keep you guys posted.

Thanks !!
 
Andrizzle said:
Anytime the gauge is reading more than halfway - the car is 'overheating'. Try bleeding the cooling system and go from there. Likely you have a failed or failing degas bottle.
Click to expand...

Thank you, I will do this right away. Could you direct me to a thread or tell me how I go about that procedure? And what is a degas bottle and if it is defective, are they expensive and/or difficult? Thanks for your advice
 
SoulSoak said:
http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/forum/showthread.php?75746-Degas-bottle-replacement-with-pics

Found this while searching. But this engine looks different than mine, is it the V6? Or maybe a different gen V8? I dunno
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That is for the v8 not sure which gen if gen matters. Mine is a gen 1. The degas bottle will run you about $95. Napa has generic ones that may fit, I didn't go look but they were much much cheaper. About $15 for the more expensive one.

Good luck with your LS
 
sounds like degas to me... do not get an aftermarket degas they wont last much more than a year - get the oem degas to save you the hassle.
 
jjcool00 said:
sounds like degas to me... do not get an aftermarket degas they wont last much more than a year - get the oem degas to save you the hassle.
Click to expand...

What he said. The cracks in the bottle are hairline as they are basically stress fractures. They will leak off and on (causing intermittent overheating) until they grow large enough to not allow the system to pressurize.
 
Thanks for all the input and advice!! I'm going to order a new degas resevoir this week as well as a thermostat because it's cheap and I might as well change it while I'm doing this. So is that thread I linked a good step by step to follow to drain/flush my coolant and get rid of air pockets etc.? Or would you recommend a different method or procedure? Thanks guys !!
 
SoulSoak said:
Thanks for all the input and advice!! I'm going to order a new degas resevoir this week as well as a thermostat because it's cheap and I might as well change it while I'm doing this. So is that thread I linked a good step by step to follow to drain/flush my coolant and get rid of air pockets etc.? Or would you recommend a different method or procedure? Thanks guys !!
Click to expand...



That is a good link. The method shown to bleed the coolant looks to be directly copied from AllData and works well. Be sure to have some patience with you when you get to bleeding. It's a bit tricky to get all the pockets out. At least it was for me not being very mechanically inclined.
 
just going to throw this one out there, it might not be the degas bottle, but it does sound like some part of the plastic cooling system does have a leak. the whining sound you heard is probably a small pin hole or crack whistling air out, causing the system to not build enough pressure and allowing the coolant to boil (that liquid sound you heard) while the car was overheating.

more than likely with the age of your car, you probably are due to replace all of the plastic cooling parts (including the degas bottle) as they will all start breaking at the same point. this is exactly what i had to do at the end of last summer. once you find the leak, you will want to only replace the bad part, but other parts will probably start breaking when you start taking other stuff apart, if you dont do all the parts at the same time, you will be doing the rest of the parts very soon, I know from first hand experience...


heres one of the threads that i used to gather the parts list
http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/forum/showthread.php?76454-Engine-overheat


EDIT: here is the other
http://www.lincolnvscadillac.com/forum/showthread.php?77940-Coolant-Hoses-Total-Cost
 
To add to that, if you plan to replace the thermostat, for sure you need the three plastic pieces (and the various seals) related to the thermostat. It is very likely that one or more of these will break (if they haven't already) when you take the old thermostat out.

For your other question. It is not at all normal for the V8 to overheat in stop and go traffic. I had mine sitting at idle for over a half hour before running the AC in 100 degree heat with no problems and no signs of overheating. Replace all the plastic parts, and yours will do just as well.

Here's the correct bleeding procedure for your LS.
http://deneau.info/ls/s6x~us~en~file=s6x33004.htm~gen~ref.htm#extract_142
 
Thank you Joegr and LoudLS, hopefully I can get this done on my own but I don't think it will be an easy task.
 
Okay so after reading the coolant bleedout/refilling procedure posted by Joegr, I've come to find it doesn't seem too unbearably difficult to tackle. I am going to just order all the hoses/plastic cooling parts etc. as well as a new thermostat.

One quick question I have though is about my cooling fan. I was doing quite a bit of Lincoln LS overheating searching and came accross this in a thread..

It said something about my cooling fan should switch on to a high RPM speed when the A/C is turned on and operating. Just for the hell of it, I decided to see if mine did. With my drivers door open(allowing me to hear sound effects from engine bay better), I activate the A/C. I hear a switch/click noise come from the engine bay, but when I get out of the car to listen and inspect the fan, it doesn't seem to be spinning any faster than normal.

Now, whether or not this "fan is supposed to be running at high RPM while A/C is running" theory is true or not.. I don't know. But I did read it, so I'm just inquiring. I think I will check my fuses/relays that control the fan tomorow in the daylight before work.

Any input is appreciated, thanks guys God bless and have a good night.
 
Oh and one more question I forgot to ask pertaining to the coolant bleedout thread. It states that you can only remove 80% of the coolant from the engine without removing the engine from the vehicle. So how do I properly go about flushing EVERYTHING out? Thanks again, Soak
 
You don't need to flush it 100% out unless there are contaminants in there that must come out.
just fill and let whatever is in there blend with the fresh stuff, it'll be just fine.



RE: your Degas bottle stress cracking,


BigRigLS said:
Damn Degas ...

This thing had more holes in it then a block of Swiss cheese!

attachment.jpg

attachment.jpg


The wife, she's such a sweetheart, "can't you just glue it?"

~ No, honey, that's only your car that gets the glue and duct tape!
Click to expand...
 
SoulSoak said:
... One quick question I have though is about my cooling fan. I was doing quite a bit of Lincoln LS overheating searching and came accross this in a thread..

It said something about my cooling fan should switch on to a high RPM speed when the A/C is turned on and operating. Just for the hell of it, I decided to see if mine did. With my drivers door open(allowing me to hear sound effects from engine bay better), I activate the A/C. I hear a switch/click noise come from the engine bay, but when I get out of the car to listen and inspect the fan, it doesn't seem to be spinning any faster than normal.

Now, whether or not this "fan is supposed to be running at high RPM while A/C is running" theory is true or not.. I don't know. But I did read it, so I'm just inquiring. I think I will check my fuses/relays that control the fan tomorow in the daylight before work.

Any input is appreciated, thanks guys God bless and have a good night.
Click to expand...

You have an electric cooling fan. Most with cooling fan problems have the hydraulic fan. Usually, the electric fan either works or it doesn't. Of course, there are rare exceptions. Does your AC work? Did you do this test by turning the ac off and starting the engine cold, then turn the AC on and listen for a speed up?
 
joegr said:
You have an electric cooling fan. Most with cooling fan problems have the hydraulic fan. Usually, the electric fan either works or it doesn't. Of course, there are rare exceptions. Does your AC work? Did you do this test by turning the ac off and starting the engine cold, then turn the AC on and listen for a speed up?
Click to expand...

Yes, that is how I did the test but my engine was already warm because I had done the test after I arrived at home from a 10min drive. Got out of car with AC off and went to inspect/listen to engine. Then went back into car and turned AC on full blast and 65degrees and got out of car to inspect engine and it sounded the same, no increase in fan speed.
 
The posts you looked at probably came from my info, which is from the Gen I PCM (2000-2002). In those cars, if the engine is COLD, the fan will spin <10%. If the A/C is ON, the fan will spin AT LEAST 40%. Hence flipping the A/C with a COLD engine can indicate if the fan is changing speeds.

This is almost certainly unrelated to a Gen 2 car.

BTW, read the stickies. Lots of info about the cooling system problems, as well as what and how to replace.
 
oddball said:
The posts you looked at probably came from my info, which is from the Gen I PCM (2000-2002). In those cars, if the engine is COLD, the fan will spin <10%. If the A/C is ON, the fan will spin AT LEAST 40%. Hence flipping the A/C with a COLD engine can indicate if the fan is changing speeds.

This is almost certainly unrelated to a Gen 2 car.

BTW, read the stickies. Lots of info about the cooling system problems, as well as what and how to replace.
Click to expand...

On my gen IIs, if the engine is hot, there's no clear difference between AC on and AC off in terms of the engine fan. Also, if you start it with the AC on and then turn the AC off, the fan speed stays up (at least for a little while). That's why I said to start it cold with the AC off and then switch the AC on.
 
joegr said:
On my gen IIs, if the engine is hot, there's no clear difference between AC on and AC off in terms of the engine fan. Also, if you start it with the AC on and then turn the AC off, the fan speed stays up (at least for a little while). That's why I said to start it cold with the AC off and then switch the AC on.
Click to expand...

Will try this in 10mins, at work and got break in 10min.
 
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