Well, I just finished washing my car and got alot of water in the engine bay when cleaning the grille. Who cares right? Well, I went for a little 'spirited drive' to dry the water off the car and noticed a bit of smoke, figured it was from the water. By the time I get home and shut off my car it sounds like it's overheating and smoke is billowing out of the hood, I'm like wow, that CAN'T BE FROM WATER. I start my car back up and looked at the temp guage which was at it's highest position! I don't know how hot it got or how long it was that hot for. The whole drive from the car wash to home was only about 12 minutes. I never got any dummy lights on the dash but it's still sizzling and smokin after 10 minutes I left the hood open for a while and am just hoping everything will be ok. Maybe I'm doin a swap sooner than I thought, anyone care to fund it for me since I have no money?!?

Cody

 

i'll bet you cooled the engine down enough and made the t-stat stick closed. thermostats are cheap, and easy to replace.

 

You can test the T-stat by bringing it to whatever temp it's supposed to open at (pot, water, burner, thermometer (meat or candy)). If it doesn't open, it's toast.

I'd move to one that fails open like the Crucial Racing one.

 

nope thermostat is fine. the radiator looks like the problem. I can't keep it filled and it's leakin pretty good.

 

A typical problem with overheating on the boxer engines is warping the cylinder heads, depending on how hot it got. You may have gotten lucky only driving it 12 minutes. If you blow a head gasket soon, you will know why. If you need to pull the heads, you have to pull the motor to get to the bolts. Then just have your heads shaved and you are back on the road!

 

Look under your car after you drive and see if you have any junk on your exhaust headers. I have a '97 and I just had the seals replaced. What happend was the silicon seals die out after awhile and it leaks some type of fluid onto the headers. That is what caused my car to smell weird.