Hello everyone, the plastic cap on my coolant reservoir cracked a weeks ago so i sealed it with some waterproof tape thinking it wasn't a big deal. of course it wasn't a perfect seal so air must've went into the rad.



i drove a bit hard on an empty road while heading home today and found out my water temp gauge was at 4/5 mark when i was about to park, really close to red(see picture). i quickly parked my car and popped my hood, the fan is running at high and my coolant reservoir was at max(normally empty) after turning my car off for 5 minutes the gauge returned to normal and coolant went back inside rad.



my question is would temp gauge at 5/8 mark considering as engine overheat(see picture)? it was there for about 5 minutes before i parked my car and turned it off. i did not see smoke from engine bay nor sense any strong burning smell. I'm just extremely worried because i don't want this to cause any damage to my engine header.

I'm planning to take my car in over the weekend and do a coolant flush to get all the air out, not sure how to bleed air myself on this TL. i order a new cap so it's on the way, but at this point i'm just really worried about if any damage to the engine was done.


thank you guys for any input and they are greatly appreciated. sorry i'm new so i'm not as knowledgeable as you guys.

 

If it broke where you have it taped, i doubt air can get in. The hose still is submerged in coolant.
You have to do further diagnosis.
Could be the tstat, temp sender, air pocket, another leak.

 

thank you so much for the reply. i did not put the drop tube back on the cap so when my car cooled down it mustve sucked in air instead. everything runs fine now after i reinstalled a new drop tube. i just wanna know if my gauge reading was in the acceptable range or overheating becuase the tl gauge does not have a red range like on other makes. thanks

 

that's your overflow reservoir. It filled up because you boiled your coolant while overheating your engine. I've done the same thing before. As long as you didn't run it too long while it was hot, you probably didn't do any permanent damage. Need to figure out why it overheated though.

 

thanks for your reply shmurda, i think it boiled because my coolant level was quite low and i didnt top it off on time, plus i reved my engine to 4~5k rpm for a few secs while driving home on an empty road, so this plus no drop tube in my resvoir might caused extremely low coolant level in my rad and made it boil. my car was running at that reading for less than 5 mins and i shut off my car before it went over 4/5 mark on the gauge. so hopefully it didnt do any damage.

im just not sure if that range is considered as over heating or still within safety region, because obviously you can see there is no red range marking on there like other makes

 

If it did any damage, you'll start seeing misfires or white smoke. Either is very obvious. If you don't notice anything else, it should be fine.

 

thanks for the quick reply shmurda, thankfully my check engine light isnt on so there is no misfire as of now. but i do see a tiny bit of white smokes coming out from my exhaust. i’ll try to take a picture tomorrow morning to get a good shot. i checked my engine oil and didnt see any coolant mix in there but its only been a day.

even though the tempature gauge stayed at 4/5 mark for less than 5 minutes but im still worried unless someone can confirm its still within acceptable range since the gauge marking is different. ive noticed a lot of new cars now have these styles of gauge marking where older ones have a red zone. ill have the exhaust picture up tomorrow and please have a look. thanks

 

It's had for anyone to be able to say for sure, but I would think you probably didn't get it hot enough to do any damage as it doesn't seem like the temp gauge was pegged. I would replace the plastic cap and with a new tube (as it looks like that could be leaking too) and a new rad cap. If you are doing new coolant, then make sure you bleed any air out and see how it goes. You'll probably be fine.

 

thanks for the reply man, yea it was only at that temperature for less than 5 minutes although after i popped the hood the engine was blazing hot and i couldn't keep my hand on the intake manifold cover for half a second . i'm gonna keep an eye on my oil color just to make sure the cylinder head did not get wrapped and causing leaks. i dont know why they stopped doing detailed markings on the temp gauges anymore it would be really nice to know where the safe rage are. seems like everything is getting simplified nowadays