Overheating?

For reasons that still confuse even me, I have two cars.  My 2005 Nissan Murano was “returned” to me in less than perfect condition. It is now overheating every time it is operated, driver side window was mostly down and would not move, driver seat ‘frame’ broken, there is a pretty good vibration at highway speeds, and a gusher of an oil leak.  So, I put my mechanic hat on and went to work.

The most obvious possibilities on the overheating problem was the radiator being plugged and/or somehow “bad” or the thermostat stuck. I was told in advance that the radiator was “blown out”. This was clearly not the case as the system was holding coolant and pressure.

The highest item on my list of most-likelies was the thermostat.  Remember the cars of our youth?  Remember draining a little coolant and just popping the ‘adapter’ off the top of the engine block and changing the thermostat?  Took all of 5 minutes and one wrench?  Ya, me too.  Those cars no longer exist… 🙁

The thermostat on the Murano is “accessible” by today’s standards but is still a project.  You can just barely see it in this photo.  It is the L shaped aluminum tube that is kinda burried.

I had already purchased a new radiator off of eBay so my plan was to replace the radiator on my way to the thermostat.  This ended up working pretty well and only took about six hours.  The real positive is that after I got the old thermostat out I could see that it was broken and so almost 100% the culprit.  See the crack in the temperature sensing part underneath the spring in the following photo?

Overheating SOLVED!

After getting the front of the car re-assembled and going for a spin, I am happy to report that the cooling system is now working as expected and no longer overheating!

Yeah!