bigsheldy

My car has been overheating almost daily for the past week. It's been about 90-100 degrees Fahrenheit here, so it's not like that's helping at all. It does it when I turn off the car after driving it for a long time. I finally got sick of it, and thought I might have a blown head gasket, so I popped the hood to check where it was coming from right after I shut off the car one time. It's coming out from underneath the filler cap. What does this mean? The cap is bad? I screw it all the way on when I put it on, and when it was overheating today I put my foot down on the cap and it stopped doing it. So does anyone know if I just need a new cap, or if it's doing it because of the head gasket or thermostat or something? Thanks in advance.

Peckster

Your car is leaking coolant?

It's not random if it's doing it every day.

It's not over-filled is it?

Are you getting a rough idle on cold start-up? That would confirm a bad head gasket.

What does your temp gauge say?

bigsheldy

It probably is overfilled, since I usually just fill it until I can actually see the coolant. I almost always have bad cold starts, but the oil doesn't look like a milkshake, and there's no oil in the coolant, which leads me to believe that it's not the head gasket, plus it's running great. The temp guage is usally at or below 2 bars, but it does occasionally go to the third bar and sometimes past it, and that's when I'm done driving it and the coolant comes spurting out.

tomrc

My cap wasn't fitting properly, it was real loose which kept the system from pressurizing. I bent the tabs on the cap so it would fit tighter and that has seemed to work. I need a new overflow tank though, I think the plastic just shaves off.

Tom
'79 Scirocco FS
'84 944

Charlotte944

Do the radiator cooling fans run?

bigsheldy

That sounds like my problem exactly, seeing as when I put my foot down on the cap really hard it stopped overheating. I'll look into a new cap at autozone or kragen today, and if they don't have one, I'll just bend the tabs like you did I guess. What exactly did you do to make it fit better? Oh, and yes, the fans are running.

edit: Fixed it! It was the cap!