[iglou]

hello all!

i'm a newbie in this forum and as a cruiserhead. i recently (and finally) bought a 1983 fj60. she's in pretty good shape, but i'm having some overheating issues. the guy i bought her from told me that he had them too, but a new thermostat seemed to fix it for him.

well, it was -15 degrees in eagle valley, colorado yesterday. i got crusher (that's her name) to crank. 20 minutes later the top water hose blew up. i replaced it and put in a new thermostat to be safe. now what happens is that i'll crank crusher, and after 5 mins, the temp gauge is past the red.

can anyone help me out? could this be the water pump? is this easy to fix urself?

[hks3sgte]

Did you bleed all the air out of the cooling system? Have you checked your fan clutch? How about the raditor cap? Is your radiator blocked?

[Jan-78FJ40]

Originally Posted by iglou

hello all!

i'm a newbie in this forum and as a cruiserhead. i recently (and finally) bought a 1983 fj60. she's in pretty good shape, but i'm having some overheating issues. the guy i bought her from told me that he had them too, but a new thermostat seemed to fix it for him.

well, it was -15 degrees in eagle valley, colorado yesterday. i got crusher (that's her name) to crank. 20 minutes later the top water hose blew up. i replaced it and put in a new thermostat to be safe. now what happens is that i'll crank crusher, and after 5 mins, the temp gauge is past the red.

can anyone help me out? could this be the water pump? is this easy to fix urself?

could be a number of things. check and/or replace (from easy to hard):

-air in system (search burping a radiator here)
-bad rad cap (unlikely the culprit at these temps)
-bad antifreeze (you have frozen passages somewhere in the engine and get no coolant circulation)
-blocked water circuit somehwere (no circulation)
-bad thermostat (use a toyota one)
-thermostat in the wrong way
-thermostat gaskets missing (unlikely, you would not get it warm then)
-bad fan clutch (unlikely to result in such problems at this temp)
-blocked radiator (no circulation)
-bad waterpump

hth
j

[iglou]

well j & hks,

i appeciate ya'lls help!
i burped crusher like a baby & the belches kept coming.
friend of mine, who's a mechanic, helped the burp process by undoing the hose running to the heater. this really sped things up a great deal. as we we're filling up the radiator with more coolant, more air and steam came out. When coolant began to come out, then we reconnected the hose.

this is the part where my wallet begins to ache....
white smoke started pouring out of the exhaust. a little bit of coolant kept spittling out too. my buddy surmised it's either a bad head gasket or a cracked head. in either case, i've decided to get the engine rebuilt. i'm gonna search the forum to see if anyone's recommended a rebuild specialist in the grand junction/glenwood springs/denver areas. if nothing comes up, i'll post a new thread for advice. thanks again for you guys's help!

i

[iglou]

i really showed my newbieness with the last post...
i ran into the thread that had that great list of local mechanics.
called a few of them and got some quotes. thx fellas!

i

[redandtootall]

I'm interesed to know why you want to rebuild the engine all together. My origonal engine on my 1984 FJ60 has 265k on it. The compression is at 165 to 175 across all cylinders. Without the bad head you might origonally have compression that good as well. If your saying money is scarce right now don't dismiss just servicing the head. It would be alot cheaper and you might get another 100k out of it no problem. By the way, I'm inclinde to suspect the seller of that rig knew the truck had a blown head and that's why he sold it. I've seen guys throw in a can of Block Seal into the radiator just to get the engine to run okay unit it sells. Remember, you bought it with the understanding that the engine ran okay and had a overheat problem that had been resolved. You are entitled to compesation now that you've learned it has a very significant problem.

[iglou]

good points red. i'll consider the compensation issue. concerning crusher, it looks like i'm gonna drop a used engine in her and rebuild the old engine myself. i'm figuring it's the most cost effective and the most fun for what my goals are as a cruisehead.

i