dodge overheating question..

Edited: 7/25/2007 9:33:41 PM by CHOSN1

So I pull into drive and see smoke from my hood. I look down and see the temp needle passed the hot mark. So i get a new thermostat, hose and coolant. Replace thermostat and upper hose. I run fresh water through system at least 5-6 times. Every time I warm engine up, the temp needle will gradually make its way very close to the HOT mark but after about 30 seconds it will back off into normal position. It will do this every time I start engine (after engine has cooled). It never did this before. It's a 90 dodge dakota with a V6

Have you checked the oil yet for a bad head gasket?
It should not get to hot before the thermostat opens unless maybe the thermostat is faulty.
Good luck man.

mabey a bad fan clutch.

yeah the oil looked normal when i changed it. Every time i ran water through system, it still looked like chocolate milk. The last few times though it did get a little better. The last time it got a lot better but still a little brown. I went ahead and put coolant in system anyway.

like fester says check the oil if it has coolant in it the oil will have a tan color foam to it.the thermosat may be bad you can check it by putting it in a boiling pot of water and see if it opens up.if those fail check to see if your coolant mixture is 50/50.pul the cap off your rad when cold and see if the inside of the rad is pluged up also check to see if the front of the rad is not cover in bugs or road junk or some type of fluff and crap.

oil looked normal. Actually better than I thought since it hadn't been changed in awhile. Coolant I mixed 50/50 and the water pump is pushing the water through system. So the only thing is that it could be a bad thermostat. But it is brand new. I did a search about fan clutch. It says it normally fails at idle. Although it was idling when this happened, it also did it to me when I took a test drive.

I will try another thermostat tomorrow and see if that changes anything. I will try the 160 or 180 degree one.

Im pretty sure t-stats are made to fail in the open position, correct me if im wrong.

maybe, but often they dont.