As some of you know, I've been working for 6 months to get my SRT4 back on the road after wrecking the front end on an icy bridge in February. I'm sooo close. But last night I started it and let it idle, wanting it to get up to temp to see if I have the fans wired correctly. The high-speed fan finally kicked on, and I looked inside to see if the temp was coming down. The gauge was almost pegged! I shut it down immediately, and I put a box fan on top of the engine to cool it off.
Possible causes:
- Not enough coolant and trapped air?
- Bad thermostat?
- Thermostat in backwards? (Is that even possible?)
- Did I leave a paper towel in the pipe behind the water pump?
- Bad water pump? (It's new, so that seems unlikely.)
Possible effects:
- Nothing serious?
- Blown head gasket?
- Cracked head or block?
It was just sitting idling, so I really, really hope it didn't do serious damage. How likely is it that the head gasket went?
My plan is to drain the coolant, take out the thermostat, disconnect both hoses at the radiator, and back-flush it with water. That should tell me if I left a paper towel in there, because it should come out the lower hose. (I don't think I did, because I was worried about it right after I put the new pump in, and I used a bore scope to look up the pipe behind the pump.) Then put a new thermostat in (test it first!), and try again?