overheating

the damn car overheated tonight. overheated and i mean fuzzikkin BURIED at hot. its been acting up the last couple days, but ONLY at a stop. i drove to pick up a friend, then we looked at this house that me him and couple of other guys are thinkin of buying. the way hhe showed me how to get there took us through almost every goddamn traffic light this side of florida. every light was red. every stop pissed off my car and it grew hot with rage. after the house we drove to the local car spot, and hung out for 45mins. took him home, and after leaving his house it start heeting up again. so i started moving faster, and the temp gauge was going up faster than my mph. stopped in a parking lot, and the cap for the radiator resevoir blew off and sprayed some coolant around the engine. real nice. real nice that the resevoir is right in front of my air filter. did i mention i woke up for work this morning at 6? and i have to wake up tomorrow at 6? this all happened about 30 mins ago. im soooo pissed off. i came home, just did a shot of 151 and now im asking for help hahahha. i let the car sit in that parking lot for some minutes and then drove the 2 seconds back to his house. buried the temp gauge agian. called my dad to come pick me up, which is sooo embarrassing in a way. good ol dad though. the damn fan wont come on at a stop, so i think maybe i over-exerted the car tonight? by driving all around? im hoping its not a clog or a water pump. i also kinda hope the car blows up before i get back to it. is there a way to tell if the water pump is bad? what about some sensor? how could i properly diagnose the whole situation and find out whats wrong? every dsm i ever owned overheated at some point or another. thank you guys for any help or advice youve gotr.
oh and this is everything i felt tonight:
:frown: :banghead: :shakehead :eek: :crying: :angryfire :swear: :wtf:

oh and i didnt see any coolant leaks whatsoever.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

By now you've probably warped the head if you buried it at hot twice, even one time will do it. Do you drive in alot of dusty areas? When was the last time you blew out your radiator fins and had your coolant system flushed and replaced with new coolant? It wouldn't be a temp gauge if it actually blew off the radiator cap, and the only real way to diagnose a water pump is to replace it. But if your car still runs then it can't be locked up otherwise it would have snapped the timing belt, and a bad bearing would make a creaking/grinding noise, so I'm implying to bring your car somewhere and have the cooling system flushed and refilled and have them blow out your radiator too. (Just blow out the fins with compressed air)

If the fans aren't coming on then you might have a bad relay... Looks like I should have gotten you that override switch diagram sooner. :( Sorry man...

ok, i think everything is ok. I went back to the car today, open the hood. i DID look at the head and the back of the motor and around the timing belt. everything looked fine. ive seen overheated(warped) heads before, and this had no lines or stresses that were apparent. that coolant flush sounds like a good idea, and im probably gonna need an oil change too. oh and my idle seems to be fixed. :confused:

when it buried, I immedietly shut it off. it was in the "safe" zone for a minute(between the lines) and then after it got into the red dotted/zigzag/whatever lines past the safe line, i shut it off. so the two times it was buried in hot the car was only running for a second.

the radiator cap didnt blow off, it was the cap for the resevoir. if the radiator cap had blown off, who knows what kinda hell id be in.

anyways i checked it out today, and there wasnt a whole lot of coolant in the system. the resevoir was dry and there wasnt anything i could see under the radiator cap. bought a gallon of concentrated antifreeze and mixed it with water, and dumped that in. started it up and let it run a little bit, and topped off the coolant. i didnt see any leaks anywhere at all. it drove fine and spooled fine, but it was driving kinda funky, like it was tired out. it drove that way before, say after a couple of times of starting up, driving, and shutting off, and then starting up a few minutes later. i think its an egr problem that people do mods for? anyways no problems at all on the way home, it was a about a 10 mile drive, and i mostly stayed moving. so no problems.

blackcrow, dont worry about it. all day yesterday i was running it somewhat hard. thursday i usually do a lot of running around, like from work to home and i hang out with friends, and then i go to this local ricer hangout(quaker steak) and i always hit it hard, so i think this was my fault lol. im gonna get the coolant flushed and then follow all the wiring for the fans and see if its not shorting out somewhere.

if your fans still aren't turning on, then you you still have a major problem. You can hotwire them to run all the time if you want.

i thought about doin that. this one guy brought to my attention that rewiring the fans might just be covering up the real problem.. although i really dont care lol. yeah blackcrow is working on a writeup as we speak. i hooked the fan up to a 9volt and the fan worked.thats funny that when you hook it up the other way the fan turns ccw. i mean...its kinda funny. geez. drove to autozone a few hours ago and back, and no problems. yeah im waiting for blackcrow's writeup, and until then i might just take it to a mechanic whos a buddy of mine, and have him totally check out the cooling system and do a flush. i hear its nothin to mess around with in these hot southern states(florida). maybe ill get a big fat aluminum radiator. or TWO big fat aluminum radiators. or one big main radiator and two smaller ones to fit in the fog light areas, or on the roof or something. get a sidemount radiator! or maybe hoses that are wrapped in freon tubes to really cool things off. ugh im so pissed at temperature conditions on cars. im goin to streetfire to watch some racing vids

yeah i have a similar problem. Both fans work when harwired to battery, but wont turn on. Started a while back when I was sitting at idle for a while just happened to look down and seen the gauge approching the top and shut it down. fuses are all good so i figure it has the be either a relay or the ecu.

One thing you can do is what im doing. Just get some 14 guage wire and run the positive into the car and through a switch, then back to the battery. Make sure you put a 10 or 15 amp fuse in line on that. You can bolt down the negative wherever it will get grounded.

Eventually I plan to actually fix the problem but I just wanna drive the car just got it tagged yesterday after having it sit a year in the garage for no good reason lol. gl later