boil-over

[Brett Dikeman]

At 8:01 PM -0400 5/29/02, Vincenzo Basile wrote:

>on top of the troubles I'm having with hesitation with IA ECU
>upgrade my car now boiled over while it was idling.It came out of
>the cap where I put antifreeze,I've heard that people change some
>sort of fusable link that causes this(no idea what this is).When car
>is driving temp is perfect ,only when idling it goes up.this is the
>first time this happen it only idled maybe 10 minutes.could someone
>point me in the right direction to this problem?


Does the fan come on when you put the climate control into BILEV,
defrost, or AUTO?  If not, the fusable link has probably
melted/cracked/corroded.  The fusable link is a piece of metal that
melts when too much current is drawn by the fan; it's just a big
fuse, that's all.

It is directly connected off the fan via a large brown wire, and
housed in a small plastic box mounted on the side of the engine
compartment a few inches back from the fan; the cover may or may not
be still on the box; on many cars, the cover falls off.  Two phillips
head screws serve as terminals; loosen them and the fuse will come
off; looks like a thin strip of aluminum.  If you look back a week or
two, I posted the part number for the fuse; well under $5 from any
dealer, though some may not stock it.

When you remove the fuse, inspect it to make sure it didn't
melt(which would indicate a fan failure.)  If it looks like it simply
cracked or corroded, you're fine; this is a very common problem.

Avoid another boilover at all costs; it can cause some very expensive
problems like blown head gaskets and warped heads!

HTH,
Brett
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