I am a new owner to a vet. A couple of times after long drives, my overflow from the radiator has sputtled out water. I think the problem is related to my driveway. It is very steep (About a 40 degree incline). Now, I had been driving like normal 80-100mph for a 80 mile streach when it overflowed the most. Some of this had to do with heat, but the engine should have been able to take this, right? I dont think it gets hot until after I go up the driveway, because there was no water anywhere else except under the car. Now, I have noticed that the temperature guage goes up suddenly when I make the trip up the drive. Is this a common problem for a '92? Is there something I should do to fix it?

I may be wrong but with a sealed system the incline should have nothing to do with over flow problem. It might be a clogged/blocked radiator plus heat soak when an engine is turned off.. Could be simple as a bad radiator cap too. It is not normal
Tell us more like the water temp and oil temp both on the road and right before you turnit off..

Bleed your system too. You might have air in the system that is expanding at boiling point causing it to push excess water out of the system into the overflow tank.

It sounds like you have some air in the coolant system. Burp the system and check the coolant for the correct mixture of coolant and water.
Also check the overflow tank cap gasket. They usually go bad fairly quickly.

A 40 degree incline is a pretty serious slope! Could it be that the unvented overflow tank is simply overflowing because of the extreme angle? Try the same type of spirited driving, but when you come home, park it on a flat street near your house and see if the overflow tank can hold all the fluid when it is level.

Yes it is. Until we fixed the drive way, almost all cars would scrape coming up it. Some people are affraid to come up it. And we never get any trick or treaters.

I dont know much about cars, but I think what is happening is that when I come up the hill when the engine needs to be cooled, the coolant from the radiator flows down hill and up into the high resevoir. Then the temperature guage shoots up. When I get to the top where there is a level parking lot, the overflow well overflows a little.

What could be causing this and how can it be fixed?

Make sure you overflow tank is not cracked either.

Glock and BobL,

I think you two have the answer. I'll give it a try.

Thanks.

[img]http]//www.corvetteforum.cc/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

No water should go into the tank just because of an incline. The water gets into the reservior after going through a pressure switch.. aka.. your radiator cap. The spring in there is measured to a certain pressure at which it rises and lets excess fluid go into the tank. When the system cools, it sucks the fluid back out of the reservior into the system. This does two things, it keeps air out of the system (assuming you have the proper level of fluid in the reservoir tank) and it also keeps too much pressure from building and blowing a gasket or something.

The reason the "HOT" level on the measure dip stick of the reservior is higher than the "COLD" is because there is supposed to be the excess water in the reservoir after it gets warmed up and the water begins to expand. The more air in the system, the more that is going to go into the tank because air expands more in heat than water does (yes water is converted to steam at boiling point, but that is a "gas" in my elementary terms used to simplify the problem).

Hope this helps....

P.S. and as Bob L said, your cap spring could not be working right too. This could be causing it to let pressure out too early allowing for excess water to go into the tank.

[This message has been edited by Glock'94 (edited 07-20-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Glock'94 (edited 07-20-2001).]

My coolant "temp" goes down the "faster" I drive..........but pulling into the drive does cause it to go up a little........hope you have found the problem......

This is just because driving faster allows for more air to pass through the radiator. When ever I get into my neighborhood and by the time I pull into my garage my fan usually kicks in (especially in the heat around here lately).