I got the 07 SS V8 and chenged my thermostat this weekend and now its overheating bad. The coolant bubbles in the overflow bottle and it gets hot. I noticed one radiator hose is cool and one is hot. Is my replacement thermostat defective. Any ideas how to successfully burp the cooling sytem in the 5.3 V8?

 

Drive it.

You can also pressure test the system or just change the rad cap.

 

Why did you change it; were you having a cooling system problem?

 

Defective thermostat.
Installed backwards.
Installed upside down.
Wrong temperature thermostat.
Not enough coolant in system.
Air in system.

 

It was running warm and its got about 130,000 so figured I would change it out for maintenance, however it seems like a monster to burp the air out. cant get heat at the vents. Is there a special trick to burp?

 

How much coolant did you remove and how much went back in?

Other things to think about:

The water pump may be bad.
The thermostat isn't functioning. Take it out and place in boiling water. If it doesn't open, it's bad.
Blockage in the system.

 

New systems burp themselves. (Is there a vent hose going from the engine block to the rad filler neck?)

Old systems had a bleeder screw near the the thermostat.

 

how much coolant did you take out?
should only of had to remove enough to drop the level below the thermostat. i try to pump the coolant from a hose by squeezing it. loosen the upper hose from the thermostat housing and see if you have fluid there or try to fill it from there. you could also remove the thermostat housing and add fluid there till you see it then install the thermostat/housing and fill the rest of the system

 

After car is running for a bit and getting close to being hot you can take the radiator cap off and the water will spray up really high when you increase the RPM's so I believe the water pump is fine. Plenty of flow going on in there.

-I think I got an an air bubble in the system and cant get out as I HAVE NO heat.

-As far as how much coolant has been removed I would say about a 2 gallons as I replaced the lower radiator hose with the installation of the new thermostat which the thermostat was not put in backwards as I verified this with ALLDATA.

- Upper and lower radiator hoses are different temperatures. Lower hose is WAY cooler.

-I did hand squeeze all different radiator hoses and you can watch the coolant level drop just a tad. I refilled and kept doing this process, however still no heat

-Last but not least is there a bleeder screw on the 5.3 V8's ? I cannot locate one like on the smaller Impala engines.

 

This.