Sounds like you need to fix your cooling fan issue and hope you have not blown a head gasket.
1998 ford taurus
So my 98 taurus was puffing out white smoke. I did one of the headgasket sealer bottles and followed all instructions. I now have my coolant reservoir bubbling over when the car is hot. It almost overheated into the red on a 10 minute drive. So far we put a water hose in the reservoir and ran the car with that in there. The tank surged multiple times(overflowing then drawing all of the water down, then repeating) please advise on what I should do next. The fans on the radiator also do NOT TURN ON AT ANY POINT
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You might get the fans to come on by turning on the Air Conditioning.
Not a fix, just more information.
Not a fix, just more information.
It's a blown headgasket. Really bad one at that. Now I've got a 4 day project on my hands
Overheating is not a good thing. You could take out the thermostat (so the engine is cooling itself at maximum capacity) and see what happens. If that keeps the engine cold you have at least a starting point. Driving around with a cold engine is not good, but it works. You could then check how much water you lose and whether you also have misfires (possibly using an OBD-II monitor to have a look).
I would not recommend the headgasket sealer bottles, but who knows, perhaps you were lucky, it actually worked and there was just a lot of air trapped into the cooling circuit.
I would not recommend the headgasket sealer bottles, but who knows, perhaps you were lucky, it actually worked and there was just a lot of air trapped into the cooling circuit.
So after holding the hose in the coolant reservoir while the motor was running. It surges several times. On the drive home temperature held steady right below half. Checked fluid level this am and lost no liquid from reservoir. Drove to work and same thing. No loss of fluid and held steady at just below half. Should I replace thermostat?
No. Perhaps it is a colder thermostat for a slightly lower temperature. Now that there is only water in the system, you could easily check whether the thermostat is properly installed though. It should be with its spring towards the engine (see Haynes/Chilton section 3.3). If not, this could have been the cause of the overheating.
Having said that, a new thermostat is not expensive, so while you are taking the old one out, you might as well replace it.
You could also check fuse 9 in the engine compartment (see the 1998 Owner's Manual, page 115). It's a 40 A fuse for the cooling fans.
You could also check fuse 9 in the engine compartment (see the 1998 Owner's Manual, page 115). It's a 40 A fuse for the cooling fans.
Your awesome, thanks for the help. Today it was running real rough at startup, sat at about 400-500 rpms and then once I put it in drive it ran with a lag of power. But I now have no smoke and I'm not losing any coolant. I'm going to do an oil change, radiator/coolant system flush and change the thermostat in hopes this fixes it
And as i left out. Once it ran and I drove it at any moving speed it ran st normal rpms 1200-2500 going speeds up to 65 mph. And no Overheating
Is the CEL off? Are there no noticeable misfires?
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