It’s never good for your car’s engine to overheat. Heat warps parts and can cause your car’s engine to completely fail. Kevin’s Auto Repair Service wants you to know some of the many contributing factors that can lead to your car overheating.
Water Pump Failure
The water pump is the part that keeps your car’s cooling system moving. But if it stops working properly, it’s not able to keep the coolant moving. The water pump might lose a belt, which is an easier fix, or it might experience bigger issues, like failing bearings.
Radiator Failure
The radiator is where the coolant ends up to get cool again after gathering up the heat in the engine. As the coolant moves through the radiator, the fins in the radiator disperse heat. If there’s a leak or other issue with the radiator, the coolant doesn’t lose enough of that heat and it recirculates through the engine at a temperature that is too high. That doesn’t do your car’s engine any good.
Too Little Coolant
Another problem might be if there’s not enough coolant circulating through the cooling system. That can happen as the coolant burns off and isn’t topped up, but it can also happen if there is a leak anywhere in the coolant system. Check your coolant levels every couple of months just to make sure that you’ve got enough in the reservoir.
Fan Issues
The fan helps the radiator to cool off that hot coolant, and if the fan isn’t working, the radiator’s job is even more difficult. The fan can fail for a variety of reasons, including losing blades or the belt that keeps it moving to break. If the problem is in a bearing, you’ll hear a lot of extra noise as the bearing fails.
Overdue Oil Changes
You might not think that engine oil has anything to do with keeping your car’s engine cool, but it really does. Engine oil lubricates and cools the engine in a slightly different way than coolant does. But if you’ve waited a bit too long in between oil changes, the oil isn’t holding up its end of the deal and the engine might be running too hot.
Is your car running hotter than it should? Give us a call at Kevin’s Auto Repair Service in Swoyersville, PA. We’ll take a closer look at the problem and let you know what your car needs in order to stop running so hot.