Hey all. This may be a little long winded, but I have been having cooling problems with my car. Today I tried to replace the thermostat, but when I clamped the radiator hoses and opened the coolant lid and unbolted the thermostat housing, coolant kept dumping out of the block and wouldn't stop. In fear of leaking more coolant on my parents garage floor I bolted it back on and replaced the coolant with the green pre-diluted kind from O'reillys.

I washed off the engine and turned the car on and it ran for about 15 minutes which is when I discovered that when I turn the headlights on the oil temp gauge goes up. And when I hit the dash with my left hand the tach goes up and down and the blinkers go on and off. This leads me to believe that there is no cooling problem and that there is just an electrical issue in the dash.

Nevertheless, I turned the car off after bleeding the system of air but when I turned it back on it idled really rough. After idling rough for about 10 seconds I turned it off and tried again. The next few attempts yielded even worse results, the car no longer turns on. I turn the key and the motor cranks but it doesn't fire up. On my last attempt there was a big thud which is when I stopped turning the key. After that, I decided to put it in neutral and roll the car onto the street, but when I put the key in the ignition the key wouldn't turn. I stopped and waited 30 seconds then I was able to turn the key and put it in neutral and roll it into the street. I have no idea what the problem is or where to start looking.

Essentially, all that happened was I unbolted the thermostat housing, then coolant dumped onto the floor, and I refilled the coolant. I'm dumbfounded how this broke my car. If anybody has any further questions or advice please let me know. Thanks.

 

where's the coolant temp sensor on your car? That will feed into most FI computers so if you damaged the wiring you'd get a false temp reading which will alter the fuel mixture.

 

From my research I found that there are two coolant temp sensors. One for the temp gauge near the knock sensor under the front of the intake manifold, and one for the ECU under the third intake runner under the manifold.

 

Thermostat housing is above the distributor - have you taken the distributor cap off to see how wet it is inside? Or how much new tracking is there because of the liquids introduced? Tracking are the black lines that go from copper pole to pole in the cap, or pole to the distributor base, or visible on the outside of the cap sometimes - created from arcing - those can prevent the spark from going to the correct pole at the correct time - and engine runs bad or does not run. Solution is a new (bosch) cap and rotor. Stay away from the aftermarket stuff - whether it is cheap or not.

 

I just went out and cleaned the distributor cap of moisture and she started up. youre a life-saver, thank you. When I checked the four copper poles there was a lot of hardened black stuff on them. It smells like its running a bit rich which I think is disrupting the ignition causing a problem with the fuel mixture. Thoughts?