nickmayo

Hey all,

Im new to the forum and am hoping someone on here could help me pinpoint an issue going on with my 01' 2.2 Cavalier.

The back story:
Earlier this week the temp gauge was parked at 225ish. I topped the coolant off and it continued to overheat. I limped it over to my dads filling it every 5-10 min, by the time I got there it was knocking and pinging pretty good (started about 2 minutes from my dads).

What we have done so far:
We noticed a crack in the radiator, replaced it with a brand new unit. Fired her back up and she still ran hot, and it appeared there wasnt any flow. Replaced the thermostat and it seemed to get worse. Took it back apart to see if there was anyway we could have put it in backwards and notta. Once we sealed it back up it looked promising, the bleader seemed to be spouting out the air and working. The car started blowing heat for a bit. The needle was still parked at about 200 (Thermostat is rated at 180). I took it out for a test drive and as soon as it got under load it shot to 260.

This opened up a whole new issue, now the needle would drop down to 100 and the fan would kick off, then 2 seconds later would jump back up to 260. It kept pulsating like this until we gave up at the end of the night.

We do notice that there may be a blockage of flow, the lower radiator is chilled, while the upper is hot. The water pump is brand new as of 4-6 months ago (possibly it could have seized due to the loss of coolant in the commute?)

I did check the exhaust fumes, doesnt seem to smell like coolant, and theres no foam under the oil cap, so Im hoping this has nothing to do with the head gasket.

Any thoughts as to our next steps would be greatly appreciated.

-Nick

BW56

My 02 did this also. Here is a 4 page thread documentation of what i did to fix it.

https://chevroletforum.com/forum/cav...rything-45692/

good luck