I've got something on my mind this afternoon and wanna hear what people have to say about it.

I'll prefice by saying my exact scenario is with my 75' pontiac lemans 350. Which is not a sbc, but I also own an 88 suburban with a 350 and my question remains the same.

On my way home from work today I noticed some smoke at a stop light coming from under the hood. My car is a bit of a beater and I honestly wasn't too worried about it, I wanted to make it home. I drove for another 5-10 minutes and decided to pull over and see what was going on. My coolant overflow was boiling and pissing coolant.

I made the decision of continuing to drive 5 10 minutes home where I popped the hood and read the intake manifold temperature of 300°. My waterpump belt had snapped, which I hadn't noticed previously.

I know overheating can a lot of issues to an engine. What effects do you think this afternoon had on my engine? Or would have on an engine in such scenario. Would the radiator with no fan or pump have even done me any good driving home?

I know this seems like a dumb post but I'd love to education from this.

 

Boiling over leads to loss of coolant, and as a result, losing the ability to cool the engine which gets very hot. Eventually this can lead to total engine seizure or failure. The degree of damage depends on a lot of variables .... how hot did it get ..... how long was it overheating etc.

best case, nothing bad happened and you just need to refill and go.
If it was overheating a lot, the pressure can spike and start splitting hoses, cracking radiators, etc.
Run it this way too long, and head gaskets start failing, engine heads warp from heat etc.
Worst case is catastrophic failure. parts melt, blocks crack, bearings seize etc.

Drive it and see. If it runs rough then I would definitely be getting head gasket test kit or measuring cylinder compression.




No. The hot water just sits in the engine and boils off at that point.