rev up your engines okay yeah we've got a
problem car, customer says it's overheating a little but it's been hard
to start and is running wrong of course the first thing I did was hook up my
fancy scan tool and unfortunately wanted to give me nothing everything's passed
no fault we go through the whole system no problems and it's recorded so we're
gonna start simple here says starting overheat so check the coolant but you can
see it's full all the way to the top and it's a nice pink color it's supposed to
be so let's check the cooling fans easiest way is start the car up turning
AC on full blast then go on to the hood check the cooling fans this one's gone
good and that was one good it's all the cooling fans are working so as far the
overheating could easily be the thermostat is sticking not opening up
right so what the heck well just put another one on for that and now
overheating can make your car run weird but she's also saying it's hard to start
when it's cold and that won't have any effect on that thermostat is sticking
shot it will actually start off faster cuz it warm up faster so something else
is doing that so we'll check the air filter I think it's not particularly
dirty do not we check the spark plugs you gotta use this stretch a hex wrench
to get this stupid thing off my office does yeah we take off the coil on plug
take that ten millimeter oh just pops out just a spark plug socket check that out it comes notice maybe has iridium
plugs they're firing right the kind of a white light gray that's normal or when I
measure the gap the gaps pretty normal for this thing so there's nothing
obvious wrong spark plugs these are radium they're very expensive but they last a
long time there's no sense changing them if one of them say was bad and the
others weren't I would have a misfire coat and there's none of that in the live data so there's gotta be a problem I'm assuming in the fuel
injection system so I'm gonna try to clean it with some cleaners but first
before things even get hotter I'm gonna get the thermostat so although
that at least that won't be stuck shot making the engine overheat so the first
thing we'll do is change the thermostat they open and close with heat and I'm
assuming this one is just staying closed at times and making the car overeat how
to do this you have to take the air cleaner housing out of the way so we'll unbolt that there's two big clamps and pull it off and as we pull it off, miracle of miracles we find out why it's
probably not running all that well this the duct is all ripped we have to replace it
working logically has miracles like this just take an air cleaner off to get to
the thermostat big ducts ripped and that's why it's idling bad
look at that haha because when this rips then air gets sucked in which bypasses
the mass airflow sensor so the mass airflow sensor doesn't meter this and
you get the wrong air fuel mixture which of course will make it run poorly
especially when it's idling and you're starting it well we're gonna change the
thermostat first so once we get the top off we take the bolts off inside there's
three of them get them out of this baby
it's hidden way inside here you gotta take on and off to get to this and then
unbolt the hoses and pull it out then you remove the three little 10
millimeter bolts that hold the thermostat in place their hard to
get so you need a long extension to reach them and then the thermostat housing
just Wiggles out there's not much working room on this thing it's like oh
we gotta wiggle and pull and believe it or not there's so little working room on
this crappy design you got to take the starter off to get it off so here goes
the star this so unfold the two started bolts so turning on so you got swirl it
quite a bit not it comes and we got to pull the starter out of they way, alright now
we can get the thermostat housing out and it should give us enough room then you can
reach you with pliers and there it is as you can see it's stuck shut, I mean
the old one was in there for what 17 years normally I'd change it more often but
this is such a job you can see most people know I gotta change them until
they finally break, you see there's a little dongle here that's an air bleeder
you put it in so that's on the top where the air will be and as you can see the
been hair it pushes right in the hole the rubber seals it can you put the
thermostat housing back over it don't you just put the three bolts back on
first put them on hand tight and now I'm make them snug with the ratchet then of
course you got to bolt the starter back on there's the starter it sure is one
gigantic pain in the butt to change the thermostat just keep turn until
the starter is tight yeah we put the air box back in the hole they don't make it easy, and remember to
put the new air duct in for the one that was ripped just slips on this one then slip the other end on the air box
make the clamps tight huh don't forget to do both of them, then before we
put all the covers and everything back on we're starting it up make sure it
runs and make sure there's no leaks and then of course as it warms up we got to
add coolant because some of it dripped out we change the thermostat and there
you have it a car that idles smooth and run smooth and there's
no longer overheating, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car
repair videos, remember to ring that Bell
