I had a T3 6262 kit installed recently and got it all tuned and all that good stuff. I've put maybe 350 trouble free miles since it's been tuned. I drove it all day yesterday and it performed flawless. I got back into the car to go home and it started and drove perfect. After about a mile I noticed the water temp gauge had shot to the hot area. I quickly shut off the car at this point there were no signs of any overheating or anything bad really.

I turned back on the car and the gauge was in the middle, so i proceeded on my drive home. Within about 1/2 mile it was going up again (I was getting on the highway at this point). As I got into the highway the gauge came back down to normal. I took my exit and noticed the gauge going up again. I blasted the heat and the gauge went back down to normal. Now the cars just sitting at my house. It was late and dark so I didn't really get a good look at anything.

But what I should be looking for??

 

Sounds like you could possibly have a sticky thermostat, that could definitely cause that problem.

 

Had a little of free on lunch, so I went home and let it idle for about 15-20 minutes. The gauge went to the middle in about 5-8 minutes, than just stayed there.....

So basically I couldn't reproduce the problem. I played with some of the grounds, but they all looked pretty solid and the coolants full......

 

You could have possible also lifted the head too. It happened to a buddy of mine

 

^ Also happened to my friend few weeks back.

 

I had some ARP's with a new OEM gasket put in a few thousand mile's ago. If I had lifted the head, the coolant wouldn't still be full would it??

 

Yes it would

 

happened to me after I installed a Red and cams last month. Overflowed and ended up needing studs and a gasket. i went with MAP studs and Cosworth gasket and it fixed the problems. Coolant actually shot out of the hood vent when WOT.

 

There's no coolant anywhere though and it doesn't smell like coolant at all. So if the head lifted it wouldn't get hot at idle, just when i'm driving??

 

My car is basically stock except for some Ecuflash tuning and I had this exact same problem yesterday. I don't think that I lifted the head there aren't any coolant leaks, and my coolant is clean no signs of oil or foreign substances. Could it possibly be a sticky thermostat as was suggested earlier?

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated

George

 

This has never happened to me, but seeing as you are stock most likely either a faulty gauge or sticky thermostat would be where I'd start.

 

Checked all the grounds and the gauge I'm refering to is the one in the instrument cluster, so I will try the thermostat, I haven't changed it yet and my car has 82,000 miles maybe its time...

Thank you for your help.

 

If it were the thermostat then it would still overheat when you blasted down the highway. If you lifted the head you would fill up the overflow resivoir after hitting boost. Did you check/top off the coolant? Check to see if the fans are working.

 

Coolant is full as is overflow bottle in my case, and also in my case it was running hot on the freeway also, fans still turn on I checked today.

Thank you for your help!

 

The next step is to either change the thermostat or open the radiator cap and pump air into the cylinders through the spark plug holes with an air compressor to see if it comes through the cooling system. Or try the block test with the magic blue fluid.