Grand AM Heat Problem

My daugther has a 99 Grand Am with a 3.4L engine. The other night my daugther was driving the car and it overheated. I went to pick her up and only 2K from the house I could see antifreeze on the road. She said the temperature shot up to 130 and she pulled over.

Today I checked the engine over and could find nothing wrong. No hoses cracked, broken, etc. I filled the reservoir back up and followed the procedure from the post Bleeding Your Cooling System. I let the car run for about 30 minutes and I had a nice stream of liquid coming back to the reservior through my bleeder port.

I buttoned up everything and took the car for a drive. I was getting warm air but not has hot as I thought it should be. I also noticed that when I came to a stop the heat started to turn cool until I sped up again then the heat started to come back.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this.

Welcome to AF !

Sounds like thier might be air trapped in the heater core, typical when the system is drained or is run low.

Keep doing the bleeder valve, with the heater on full heat & with the fan on low. These are a real pita to get air out sometimes.

Thanks. I will try and bleed more out of the system. Any idea why it would spew antifreeze out to begin with?

Not sure about the leakage.

Did she mention it overheating or anything before it happend ?

It is possible it blew it out the overflo on the Resiv. This is also a pressurized system, meaning with the resiv. cap on it should be air tight.
If you squeeze one of the larger rad. hoses and it blows air out the overflo tube, then you could have a bad resivor cap.

I believe it did blow out the overflow line just because of the splash pattern in around the left side. I know the cap was on tight but you could be right in that the cap could be faulty. My daugther side she did notice a couple of times where the temperature gauge went up to 130 and right back down.

yes replace your cap, you will notice that your old cap's seal is almost cut from tightening. $4.95 at Autozone

If cap is not holding pressure it will overheat faster. Remember liquid under pressure will have higher point of boiling which means less steam created and less air pocket problems.