Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Overheat question!

Last night its busy as hell at my dominos store in kingston, one of my drivers cars break down so i have to take a double delivery, fire up the car drive to the first one and shut it off, come back, fire it back up fly out to the next one and left it running out front, when i come back all i can smell is burning coolant, but i didn't look at my temp gauge till my check engine light came on and saw that it was maxed out, i shut it off and coasted back to the store. The coolant was boiling but not too badly. So everything i know about cars and there intricate workings told me that its just the thermostat cause the heater is blowing cold air even cranked up and on the hottest temperature. Canadian Tire changes the thermostat and its still overheating at the store so they say they will check the headgaskets, now i never saw any white out the exhaust pipe it still had all its power, could this be a sign of a broken water pump impeller, or something worse?

water pump impeller... Get one from NAPA... the metal impeller one. The impeller shattered.

99.9999999% sure its your wp.

• you have a 95 (before the 98.5/99 change to a stronger impellar
  
• you're bound to have over the 60-80K miles it NORMALLY(almost POSITIVELY) shatters at.
  
• you have no heat. The heater core is ffected by the circulation of hot coolant across it. the thermostat is after the heater core, so heat would still cycle through the heater core.
  

AKA.. Change your WP.

Don't pay to have it done.. at all.

Buy a wp with either a WHITE impellar, or a metal one (I'd go with the white one, personally) and grab a belt as well.

The changing procedure takes all of 25 minutes.. When you remove the WP., try to piece together the old impellar like a puzzle.. if you can get all the pieces, you're golden.. throw the new one on, and you're set.

If you can't piece it together, add another 25-35 minutes to backflush the coolant system completely.

Either way, check the codes (You have a 95, so you can do it yourself.. look on the main page of contour.org, under FAQ/Common Problems for the CEL listings and how-to)


Report the code back to us, and we will go from there.
DO NOT ALLOW THE CAR TO HEAT UP ANY MORE. Aluminum heads tend to warp with that heat. You may want to run a compression test on the engine to make sure it didn't warp.



Ray

Three things to check. Water pump, water pump, and water pump. I can't tell you how many of these I have changed in my shop. They have plastic impellers that get brittle and shatter, leaving a shaft that turns, but turns nothing. No flow, big overheat problem. I bought my Contour because the people thought the cylinder heads were out. It started and ran well, so I knew it was the water pump. Don't forget to take the hoses off and flush the pieces out, then flush or refill with fresh coolant.

wow its crazy to see that 3 people in a span of 10 minutes all post about the same problem, its gotta be some sorta fluke.

or the weather!

so i know you said do it myself in like 25 minutes but i took it in cause im too busy and so on and so forth. I told the guy to nevermind everthing else and tear the waterpump apart. He calls me back an hour later saying he has a handfull of peieces of shattered water pump impeller, saying its the most useless place for plasitc he has ever seen. So a big thank you to all you for your expert diagnosis. He also said hes gonna use contour.org for the next time a sickly contour or mystique comes in so he can figure the problem out right away.

How much did that cost?

figure about $300... I'm anxious to see how close I am.


Ray

close!!!!

404 and change thats with a new thermostat, because they were trying to narrow down the culpret by changing the easiest thing first. Woulda been more if i didn't stop them from running there other tests BEFORE tearing off the water pump.

I walked in to the shop and told the guy what everyone else was saying "its the water pump" so i said "forget everything eles and rip it apart and tell me they're wrong". And low and behold the CEG gurus were spot on yet again.

i guess i owe someone a pizza!

thanks!