Greetings guys,
Sorry for the long post, but I need to lay the ground work for my dilemma...
I bought a 2000 Sonoma in March 2010. I bought it primarily because I wanted to buy and tow a pop-up trailer for camping. My wife and I have been tenting for the last 4 years and wanted to get off the ground!
The Sonoma is an automatic, 4.3 V6, and it has the ZR2 suspension on it (before they called it ZR2 I think?). Our first camping trip with it was in June (still tenting!) it was about a 4 hour trip from home to West Virginia.
Along the way I noticed the temp gauge was climbing and it actually boiled over on a gas stop we made. I bought some Dexcool, topped it off when it cooled down and headed on. I never noticed any temp issues before - it was still cool and summer was just beginning...
When we got home I took it to the first garage... they put a new t-stat in it. I drove it an hour and temps were 225+... no good.
I took it to a second garage... they let it sit in the driveway up against the wall of the shop for 2 hours and no issues... but he did notice some weeping around the intake gaskets. I had those changed. But I still had a heating issue...
My buddy had been telling me that I should 'hear' the engine fan howling if the temps were that high. I told him I never heard anything like he was describing... he assured me I would know it when I heard it!
I changed the fan myself and he was right! My first start-up afterwards I heard such a howling, I thought something was wrong.
Sure enough that seemed to fix her up... a few minutes of howling when I first started her up and then temps were controlled... until I took our newly purchased pop-up out for the maiden trip!
At the beginning of the trip I heard the fan howling... and when the engine would get warm it'd start howling again and bring the temps back down. But then I stopped for about 15-20 minutes with the engine running... the temps got up to 220+ and when I hit the road the fan howling never kicked in and the temps stayed high the rest of the trip.
I thought my fan conked out... well, we when we limped into the campground and got set up we went out and there was the howling fan again.
I came home from our camping trip and put a new water pump on the beast and changed from Dexcool to conventional coolant... but the camping season was over so I didn't have the opportunity to 'test' the truck again.
The winter has been no trouble... fan has been howling every time I start it up... engine temps have been hovering at about 195 ever since my water pump changeout...
But now I'm gun shy... we're making camping plans, but I don't want my Sonoma to let me down.
I would appreciate hearing any first hand experiences you all have had and am I missing something? Should I be worried?
My Sonoma should be able to tow my 1250 pound trailer all over creation with no trouble... but I'm worried.
Again, sorry for the long post...
Jim
Sorry for the long post, but I need to lay the ground work for my dilemma...
I bought a 2000 Sonoma in March 2010. I bought it primarily because I wanted to buy and tow a pop-up trailer for camping. My wife and I have been tenting for the last 4 years and wanted to get off the ground!
The Sonoma is an automatic, 4.3 V6, and it has the ZR2 suspension on it (before they called it ZR2 I think?). Our first camping trip with it was in June (still tenting!) it was about a 4 hour trip from home to West Virginia.
Along the way I noticed the temp gauge was climbing and it actually boiled over on a gas stop we made. I bought some Dexcool, topped it off when it cooled down and headed on. I never noticed any temp issues before - it was still cool and summer was just beginning...
When we got home I took it to the first garage... they put a new t-stat in it. I drove it an hour and temps were 225+... no good.
I took it to a second garage... they let it sit in the driveway up against the wall of the shop for 2 hours and no issues... but he did notice some weeping around the intake gaskets. I had those changed. But I still had a heating issue...
My buddy had been telling me that I should 'hear' the engine fan howling if the temps were that high. I told him I never heard anything like he was describing... he assured me I would know it when I heard it!
I changed the fan myself and he was right! My first start-up afterwards I heard such a howling, I thought something was wrong.
Sure enough that seemed to fix her up... a few minutes of howling when I first started her up and then temps were controlled... until I took our newly purchased pop-up out for the maiden trip!
At the beginning of the trip I heard the fan howling... and when the engine would get warm it'd start howling again and bring the temps back down. But then I stopped for about 15-20 minutes with the engine running... the temps got up to 220+ and when I hit the road the fan howling never kicked in and the temps stayed high the rest of the trip.
I thought my fan conked out... well, we when we limped into the campground and got set up we went out and there was the howling fan again.
I came home from our camping trip and put a new water pump on the beast and changed from Dexcool to conventional coolant... but the camping season was over so I didn't have the opportunity to 'test' the truck again.
The winter has been no trouble... fan has been howling every time I start it up... engine temps have been hovering at about 195 ever since my water pump changeout...
But now I'm gun shy... we're making camping plans, but I don't want my Sonoma to let me down.
I would appreciate hearing any first hand experiences you all have had and am I missing something? Should I be worried?
My Sonoma should be able to tow my 1250 pound trailer all over creation with no trouble... but I'm worried.
Again, sorry for the long post...
Jim
