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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 01:38
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Installed a new thermo-fan yesterday. Had some dramas doing it, like there was a hole in the radiator created by trying to take out the dead thermo-fan. Got some radiator putty and sealed that up ok, installed the new fan, connected it up to pull heat out of the radiator (the same as the other fan does), swapped over the coolant after reconnecting up all the lines, etc. After we got over all the radiator fan drama, we did some initialising of the Power FC like running it on normal idle for 10 minutes, running it under full electrical load and at idle for 10 minutes, etc. Took it out on the road and the temp gauge seemed to be in the "normal" range for my 71°C thermostat. Gave it a bit through the gears while making corrections to the ECU's tuning (thanks to Ben at BEL Garage) and the gauge was rising... the same was happening on Ben's Laptop as he was tuning it. We decided to take it out on the M4 to try and give it some cool air through the fans. The ECU light starts blinking at me, then flashing madly and soon after the engine starts pinging it's tits off. 
We pull over to see if the fans were ok and everything was good, and there wasn't a leak to be seen, and the new thermo-fan was still in good shape. We turn off the Burnett St. exit and get back on the M4 the other way to head back to the Garage. On the return trip we were using the standard 3S-GTE ECU as the Power FC wouldn't let us take the car any further if it got over 100°C engine temp (it was at 125°C), and the intake air temp was at 65°C. 
So after the car cooled down a little (on ignition the fans were doing their job of pulling heat out of the radiator), we headed back. The car was still very hot on the way back, so I decided to turn on the heater to extract a bit of the engine heat, since it worked before the new fan was replaced. I was a bit surprised to find out that there was no heat coming from the heater! The strange thing is that (as far as I know) none of the heater connections were touched in the process of changing over the thermo fans or radiator coolant.
I checked it over again last night before heading home from BEL (after letting the engine go completely cold), and there were still no leaks and everything seemed to be fine. I had the Power FC hooked in for the drive home, and I was monitoring the readout on the hand controller for the engine temp, and I had it going VERY easy on the drive home. The inj. duty was never more than about 7% and I tried keeping the revs as low as possible on the gears. For a while it was sitting at about 73-74°C (normal), but after sitting at a few sets of lights the temp went up every time the car took off, no matter how lightly I drove off. After the temp got above 80°C, I hit the heater fan and it pushed out nothing but cold air, and the temp gauge was skyrocketing. I had to pull over to let it cool down again.
By the time I got home, the final temp was at 100°C. I don't know what's causing this but I need a possible fix for it ASAP.
Any ideas? FYI, the radiator is still working, it's not a BHG situation and coolant does splash out of the reserve bottle when it overheats. I don't know about the radiator cap though, it seems to still be good.
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Registered:
August 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 01:52
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thermostat?
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Location:
Brisbane
Registered:
February 2003
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 02:00
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thermo? and air bubbles in the cooling system ... while flushing the system you moved gunk form the engine to the radiator and heater cores?
dud you flush the system before adding new coolant?
radiator cap failure would be indicated by coolant leaks around cap or the overflow bottle filling as soon as heat enters cooling system. as this is an obvious visual indicator (and you haven't mentioned it) i'd say the cap is ok?
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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 02:12
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There hasn't been enough time for gunk to build up. The car has only been back on the road for 4 months. No the system wasn't flushed before adding more coolant. There wasn't any leaks around the rad cap.
It could be the thermostat, but how does that translate to the no-heat-from-the-heater problem?
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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 02:15
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As I mentioned earlier, it stays at the thermostat-opening temp for a while, then goes right past it. I'm still not sure it's thermostat though, although I don't want to rule it out either. 
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Location:
Brisbane
Registered:
February 2003
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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 02:27
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Yeah had heater running, squeezed both top and bottom hoses to get air bubbles out, etc.
The putty was rock solid after just 10 minutes. The ideal curing time according to the packet is 2 hours, but we let it sit for an hour and a half before we started the engine, and the ECU settling-in period took the remaining half hour required.
The 3S-GTE runs a MAP sensor, which is prone to it's own problems, but none were apparent when we took it for a run. The Power FC 'leaned-out' the engine (the pinging) when it got over 100°C, when we were on the M4, that's when the engine light was flashing at us.
I don't know if this has to do with the intake temp as well, but is it related at all?
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Location:
Brisbane
Registered:
February 2003
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 02:39
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hot intake wont help a all - particularly if the duty cycle is low (e.g. you're running very lean for them high temps).
the whole thing then becomes a vicious circle: hot air makes car run hotter so under bonnet temps and coolant gets hotter which makes intake air hotter....
sounds dumb, but did you fill the coolant in the W2A intercooler? (you still running this?).
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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 02:59
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Yes, water-air I/C is still being used, and was filled up at the same time as the other coolant.
Under-bonnet temps should be minimal, considering the venting structure I've put on it (S-15 Silvia vent in the middle, which isn't small, and two EL model Ford XR-6 vents on the side).
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Location:
Brisbane
Registered:
February 2003
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 03:28
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well ... sounds like you'll have to go back over all the changes you made one by one to eliminate problems (again, sorry)...
| RAV-GT4 wrote on Sun, 19 December 2004 12:27 |
The 3S-GTE runs a MAP sensor, which is prone to it's own problems, but none were apparent when we took it for a run. The Power FC 'leaned-out' the engine (the pinging) when it got over 100°C, when we were on the M4, that's when the engine light was flashing at us.
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the above quote confuses m - i would have expected the ECU to not lean out the car too much when warm? and it should have retarded timing during pinging not fuel?
from my (limited) experience, my overheating issues that i thought were from the cooling system were actually elsewhere - after my red-hot-everything-on-exhaust-side episode, we (me mostly) put it down to:
-excessively retarded timing (was still burning when the exhaust valve was opening
-poor fueling (too lean at cruise and then too rich under any power)
so the radiator was trying to extract huge amount of heat from the turbo core plus the engine was getting uber-warm. At this time i had two thermos out front, plus one behind in an attempt to push/pull massive amounts of air thru the radiator. What i should have concentrated on (at the time) was proper timing/fueling. 
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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 03:38
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Funny you should say that about the timing, Ben kept saying yesterday (while tuning it in the car), "it doesn't like the timing". There's too many variables with this problem...
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Location:
Brisbane
Registered:
February 2003
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 03:42
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can you go back to the previous fuel/spark maps, solve the heater problem then return to timing issues?
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Toymods member
I supported Toymods
Location:
Rydalmere, NSW
Registered:
May 2002
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Re: No heat from heater.. ?
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Sun, 19 December 2004 11:32
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I have another idea I haven't tried yet... I'm going to put the standard 3S-GTE ECU back in for tomorrow and see how it goes with the replaced thermo-fan in it. If there's still heater issues after I've taken it out for a squirt tomorrow, I'll address those this week. I hope it's not a blockage, but it's starting to sound like it is.
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