Okay I'm kind of confused with my CL overheating recently, just wanted to see if any of you could point me in the right direction for where to start figuring out what's wrong. It's a 2.3 5spd incase that makes any difference.

I was driving along and all of a sudden got a CEL and tons of white smoke pouring out of the engine bay then noticed the temp gauge was all the way hot, pulled over and figured I had blown the headgasket so I towed it over to a shop. Well I noticed afterward that the rad cap had actually been left off the radiator, no idea how, but anyway the shop said they checked it out and there was no damage to the head/headgasket.

It's been refilled with coolant, but now when I drive the temperature will sit just below half where it normally sits for a while, then after about 5-10 minutes of driving it will start to creep up towards the 3/4 mark. I've just been blasting the heat at full power out the window whenever I have to drive the car (which is generally no more than 20 minutes at a time) to try and keep the temperature down, and it seems to work somewhat...in the sense that I haven't overheated yet.

If there was no damage done to the headgasket or anything, do you guys know what I should check next to figure out why it's not staying cool? Both fans work fine (they didn't for a while and I ended up with boiling coolant in the reservoir, but got that fixed), and the temperature is normal up until about 5-10 minutes of driving. Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!

 

thermostat isn't opening at the correct temperature. Change that, fill your coolant, and see how that works for you.

 

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

 

Also, make sure there are no air bubbles due to the cap being left off... Recently got my baby back to normal. Good luck!

 

Check ur radiator cap or change ur thermostat and the rubber housing on the top radiator hose. The same thing happen to me and the parts were cheap as hell.