Engine overheating & heater not working

Howdy ya’ll,

Got into work this morning, noticed my heater wasn’t working and saw my temp gauge much higher than it usually is. My poor ole’ 4 banger.

Did some research and it possibly could be the heater core. Any other possible problems?

Thermostat is barely 16ish months old and had roughly 27,000 miles on it. It was change along with the timing chain components, flushed and everything.

I appreciate ya’lls input.

 

Head gasket.

Did you check your coolant level?

Got air bubbles in your radiator?

Any wispy smoke in your exhaust?

Did your radiator freeze and crack?

 

^This. I had the same symptoms on our old '02 Civic.

 

Coolant level is exactly where it was when I checked it last week before a long road trip, which is full

 

Could be a stopped up thermostat or even a bad radiator cap, did you pull the rad cap or just look at the overflow reservoir?

 

I haven’t had time to really go over much other than visual stuff. I noticed it as I was pulling into my parking spot at work. I turned on the heater and noticed it wasn’t warming up and looked up and noticed it heated up.

 

When was the last time you changed coolant and bled the air out of the system? Trapped air can cause overheating. If the cooling system hasn't been maintained over time, any part of it cold be clogged - radiator/heater core.
I will also add to check the coolant level in the radiator itself and not just observe coolant level in the overflow tank.

And finally, because not everyone who's dealt with this on a 2.7 is going to see this thread, try googling:

2.7L tacoma overheating and heater not working tacomaworld.com

 

I’ll have to check the radiator itself. The whole system was flushed in June 2019 at 190,000 miles and now I have 217,000 miles on it.

 

Don't trust the idiot gauges, if you have Torque Pro(and I recommend it to everyone) you can check actual coolant temps

 

And there you have it folks. The level of coolant in the overflow bottle is not an indication of the amount of coolant in the radiator.

You are dangerously low on coolant. That’s why there’s no heat from the heater.

 

Or his thermostat is stuck closed.

 

A stuck thermostat will not result in no heat from the heater.

 

Damn, sometimes I dislike the learning process. Checking the radiator didn’t even cross my mind. Like Lester said.

 

This leads me to another question... If this is the case, which I believe it is. Where is the coolant? The only explanation is either a leak? Or radiator cap? Or something I’m missing.

I appreciate your responses.

 

Most likely a leak. You’re going to have to figure that out yourself. Could be water pump, radiator, plastic bypass tube, hose, head gasket, etc.

 

I think I found it. There is a rock ding on the right side of my radiator with some pink surrounding it.

 

That would certainly do it. Good find.

 

I took off the radiator cap and I’m pretty sure I saw some fluid in there, but if I did it was at the bottom of what I may have been looking at. When I took the cap off, it was still under a little pressure from being last on 4 hours ago. I’m not sure what I’m looking at when inspecting the radiator cap. Here is picture of the radiator rock ding.

 

Uh, yeah, that would do it. Those horizontal lines are the tubes. You’ve clearly fubared 1. You need a new radiator. After you fill the radiator, the distance you can drive is directly proportional the how fast it’s leaking out.

 

Howdy ya'll

So after this whole thing I got it fixed, new radiator, thermostat and a flush. Drove it for a while, went on a long road trip and out of a hunch I last week I decided to do my routine look under the hood. I saw bubbling in my expansion tank with coolant going over the full line. I went to the place who did the repair. A mechanic took coolant out of my expansion tank, put what was needed in my radiator and gave me a new cap.

After a few days I took it back with no issue resolve in terms of the bubbling, but no coolant being pushed into the expansion tank. They did a bunch of tests and said that the hydrocarbon reading was at about 30, said healthy engines are below 10 and usually blown head gaskets are at around 1,000ish. He said to drive it for the next week or so, but no long road trips like I usually do. He said make sure to pull over if it starts to overheat, which I haven't experienced since the fix and to keep an eye on the expansion tank on other it pushes above the full line.

He said if it does, than we'll have to consider other options, like maybe open heart surgery I assume? Or many more tests.

I joked and said I hope ole' Taco is a self-healer like humans and will correct himself.

What do you think the possibilities maybe? When I've checked it, it does it most of the time, but there have been times I haven't seen it bubbling up.