im confused ..cooling system question

another one of my baffling questions ..... so i havent cranked up my car in 4 weeks ..... i went out there tonight to take pics of how i flow my fuel for the nitrous section and i noticed my coolant system is about to exploded ... its under some serious pressure .... so i release the radiator cap slowly and it blows ...... holy shit ....

whats going on

Head gasket[s] ?

no oil in the water ..... and i did notice i still had some anti freeze left in there from the winter .... the water temp was 94* from just sitting in the garage ..... damn if it held that type of pressure for 4 weeks Lem ... i guess i will close her back up and see if it builds pressure again , then we will now if it is some kind of chemical reaction in the coolant .....

Nick what kind of cap are your running? is it some crazy no pressure relief cap or something? I would think the cap should have opened the relief to bleed off the excess pressure. Might be time to replace it if that's the case.

all it says is 13 lbs and made in china

as the system cools the pressure comes back down..................either you got some pressure past the head gaskets (6.0 diesel syndrom lol) or you have some reaction going on there. I cant imagine a cooling system with conventional rubber hoses not weeping the pressure off over a period of time.

Might have some weird chemical reaction going on there.

That's an odd one. You would think no matter the cause, if the pressure was high enough to make the hoses expand, the 13psi cap should be doing it's job and puking the excess pressure through the overflow. As to why, I have no clue. I'd still put on another possibly lower psi cap to see if it does it again. Then look into why it's doing it.

Nick,
Did you by any chance attempt to change out the valve springs like you said you were going to?? If you did, did you use air in the cylinder?? If so there is the culprit. You pressurized the system by blowing by the head gasket with the air.

Travis

TravisRice wrote:Nick,
Did you by any chance attempt to change out the valve springs like you said you were going to?? If you did, did you use air in the cylinder?? If so there is the culprit. You pressurized the system by blowing by the head gasket with the air.

Travis

good point Travis.

TravisRice wrote:Nick,
Did you by any chance attempt to change out the valve springs like you said you were going to?? If you did, did you use air in the cylinder?? If so there is the culprit. You pressurized the system by blowing by the head gasket with the air.

Travis

nope i havent Travis , but what i did do is turn the motor(try to it was very hard) over to remove 2 of the rockers while the valves were closed on the other 3 cylinders on 1 side of the engine (plugs were still in btw)
guess that was a no , no

Pull all the plugs and see if there is water in the cylinders.... if so you may have a blown head gasket...


Randy

the Coug wrote:Pull all the plugs and see if there is water in the cylinders.... if so you may have a blown head gasket...


Randy

i did that last night randy and everything looks dry and the plugs look great

dfree383 wrote:Chemical reaction..... Tap water used?

yes

so what do i need to flush the system with ???? and just refill with distilled water

What kinda head gaskets are you running Nick ?

The head gaskets can leak cylinder pressure into the cooling system and not leak water into the cylinders.

KY JELLY wrote:What kinda head gaskets are you running Nick ?

The head gaskets can leak cylinder pressure into the cooling system and not leak water into the cylinders.

cometics , do you think by me trying to turn her over by hand with the valves closed forced pressure thru the head gaskets ????? i wouldnt think so ..........

Well, if both the intake and exhaust valves were closed, and you had the plugs in, the pressure has to go somewhere. I would have thought it would have bled down into the crankcase some, but it is possible it forced itself into the coolant system through the MLS head gasket. Especially if your rings are a total seal type ring.

Yes , it is very possible or they could be seeping from that google gas you run. That's what mine was doing when the gasket was leaking. Lem told me it was a long time before I finally gave in and pulled the heads. The pressure will seep into the cooling system and will not go back into the cylinders or bleed off. When it reaches your radiator cap max it will come out the over flow.

Has it been pushing any amount of water into your over flow catch can on a regular basis ? If so the head gasket or both is leaking , it should not push any water into the catch can after it is brought to temp one time unless it gets too hot and then there is a reason for it to do it.

You can test out the chemical reaction theory , but do it with the mix you have in it now and prove that is what is causing it.

If it was chemical it would have happened last year when the block was new.

no water in the catch can .......

How did you get the air in your water system then ? Did you leave a certain amount of air for expansion ?