2000 A6 2.7T overheating

[Brett Dikeman]

On Jun 5, 2008, at 7:24 AM, kf21857 at comcast.net wrote:

> I appreciate the suggestion but the symptom I am describing is  
> caused by the complete failure of something,  i.e. a stuck  
> thermostat, not a small leak.  In another car I might suspect a  
> broken fan belt but that isn't the problem here.

The cooling system is designed to run at a proper level, not "down a  
couple of quarts", and if it cannot pressurize, the coolant will be  
more likely to boil.  If you have a cracked hose or plastic fitting  
somewhere, the system will also end up with some air in it, and that  
will cause problems as well.

You should be able to confirm what's going on using any ODB-2 scan  
tool to see what the ECU thinks the temperature is, since they're  
probably different sensors.

Brett