Please Help Cars Overheating

I have a 94 olds cutlass supreme. i have taken my car in problay about 20 or so times to the shop they just replaced the radiator an did my heads and hoses valves etc. anyways i spent 2,000 dollars for all of this . An my car is still overheating i aksed them why they couldnt change the water pump thats the only thing they havent changed an this is usually done when replacing a radiator any how, they say it has nothing to do with it overheating .so they put a new sensor switch in and it has gone down a lil bit.i told him my temp guage was always at 200 and it started going over 200 thats why i brought it in to be looked at he said its not possiable that my car ran at 200? I was wondering what your temprature gauges were reading before your oldsmobile started to over heat and what it gets up to when its over heating mines getting to about 240 and you can feel the heat rolling off! PLEASE HELP?

eng temp is about 225f you need to read coolent temp sensor by scanning the sys and then take it from there

make sure you have 1 galon of antifreez in the eng
with GM radiator cap.
what i think is your gauge is not reading properly

THe first thing I would look at is your thermostat. IT may need replacing if it hasnt been replaced yet.

check your whole coolant system thermastat, heater core lines hoses all that bullshit but watch that heat gauge i wouldn't run it that hot no matter what

Do a compression test on the engine. If you have a lower compression on one or more of your cylinders it could indicate a leaking head gasket causing air bubbles in the coolant system. These cause an air lock that stops coolent from flowing smoothly and the temp goes up...way up. When the engine is turned off the bubbles settle and the coolant will flow again till the engine warms up and the gasket starts to leak again. Worth a look.

2 Grand for trying to fix an overheating problem and still not solved? That's a lot of money in there. I won't go back in there anymore.

I would replace the water pump and thermostat yourself and save yourself another 1 grand or so.
Replacing the thermostat and water pump is not too hard.

First you need to remove a black plastic which shows the serpentine belt routing diagram. Turn the serpentine belt tensioner counter-clockwise using a ratchet alone. The serpentine belt tensioner has a 1/4 square hole where the ratchet would fit and you can then turn it counter-clockwise enough for you to slip out the serpentine belt. After that, you can then safely remove the water pump. Replacing thermostat is not that difficult. Just take your time.
Don't forget to bleed the cooling system. When you fill the cooling system with a coolant, above the thermostat there is a bleeder valve. Just turn open the bleeder valve while you are filling the cooling system and let a few coolant come out of the bleeder valve. Also, when the engine running after the cooling system is filled and caps covered, I would then open the bleeder valve one more time to let coolant come out a bit and close it.

Read this: http://www.thirdgen.org/tech/cool8dual.pdf
http://www.babcox.com/editorial/tr/tr110046.htm


Here's my procedure when I flush my cooling system.

You might have to rig up and install a manual overide of the radiator fan so you can turn the fan manually while driving the in the city stop and go.

Do you have the orange color coolant or the green color coolant? Get the right color for your new coolant replacement $6 each (3 or 4 of them). Get a coolant flush solution $4. Fluid drip pan.

Drain the coolant from the radiator drain plug, open the radiator cap to drain it faster.
Close the drain plug and put water in the radiator until full (I would suggest to use a water gallon so you can measure how many gallons it takes to fill the radiator) and put back the radiator cap. Start the vehicle for 10-15 minutes (you might want to select the heater and fan blower to max) and turn off the engine. Drain the cooling fluid and open the radiator cap.

Close the drain plug and pour the Cooling Flush solution and then fill the radiator with water and close the radiator cap. Start the vehicle for 10-15 minutes (you might want to select the heater and fan blower to max) and turn off the engine. Drain the cooling fluid and open the radiator cap.

Close the drain plug and fill the radiator with water and close the radiator cap. Start the vehicle for 10-15 minutes (you might want to select the heater and fan blower to max) and turn off the engine. Drain the cooling fluid and open the radiator cap.

Close the drain plug. Now, remember how many gallons it took to fill the radiator when filling up. Check your manual on how many total gallons of coolant it takes to fill the whole cooling system. Draining does not drain the whole cooling fluid and that is why it's important to know how many gallons it take to fill the radiator.
Example, if it takes 4.5 gallons to fill the radiator after it was drained and if the book states that it takes 6 gallons to fill the whole cooling systems with fluid, we know that it has 1.5 gallons of water still left in the cooling system even after draining it.
We want to have 70% coolant and 30% water.
30% of 6 gallons is 1.8 gallons of water.
70% of 6 gallons is 4.2 gallons of coolant.
If 1.5 gallons of water is left in the cooling systems, then we just need 0.3 gallons of water added and then 4.2 gallons of coolant.

If you want to use 50% coolant and 50% water then
we just need:
50% of 6 gallons is 3 gallons of water.
50% of 6 gallons is 3 gallons of coolant.
Since we have 1.5 gallon of water left in the cooling system, then we just need 1.5 gallon of additional water. We just need to add 3 gallons of coolant.