Need advice, overheating

[carterjoe]

Hi folks so the other day I was on my way home from work and my car started overheating really bad. It also idles really lopy and the heater blows cold. So I figure it must be the thermostat. thermostat is now replaced and same problems are still happening. could this just be air in the cooling system and i didnt bleed it well enough?? I'm stumped and need my car asap. i was just feeling around after it overheated and every hose was really hot, but the one connecting to the thermostat wasnt hot at all. what does this mean? any help is greatly appreciated

[camshaft]

Would be nice if you provided some info

Year of car
Turbo sc NA
Kms
Last time head gasket was changed
Brand of thermostat
Brand of coolant

Did you follow the oem manual procedure to bleed the car ?

From your description sounds like the headgasket is gone

[camshaft]

the heater not working is Caused from the combustion gases leaking from the cylinders into the cooling system.
It overheats because the engine can no longer transfer heat into the coolant. As the combustion gasses are interfering





Some great reading

http://www.agcoauto.com/content/news/p2_articleid/200

[carterjoe]

oh ya im a bozo.

the car is a 1987 na
it has 390k on rebuilt engine and headgasket was done roughly 100k ago i believe
thermostat was from lordco,brand-name Stan
coolant is prestone

and yes i believe so, i opened the 3 bleed valves and filled coolant until it came through and then shut the bleeders. was there anything else i should have done?

[camshaft]

I prefer oem thermostats for the quality of workmanship.
But that isn't your problem

I would expect a headgasket to last longer then 100k BUT I have seen poor quality aftermarket gaskets fail prematurely. Or other related mechanical issues like warpage, pitting, incorrect torque or bad bolts.
Or incorrect machine shop resurface finish

[carterjoe]

yes i normally would buy oem but i already kind of figure it was the head gasket so didnt really want to waste money/time if it wasnt going to fix anything

well i guess i know what im doing during my holidays
do you happen to know what kind of surface is require for an aluminum engine head
if the head needs to be skimmed i might consider doing it myself