lol, I'll just let more knowledgeable people answer this insted of try and figure it out myself...
I'm swapping bumpers and pulled my coolant reservoir out, and there's considerably more coolant in it compared to where the MAX line is, why is this?
PS, when I say more, it's a looks to be about 1.5 to less than 2 times how much fluid would be in the bottle if it were at the MAX line.
If I remember correctly as your car is cooling down it spits out a little bit when you've parked it. It should suck back in that little bit when you start it up again.
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and either way, the there should be fluid all the way up to the neck of the radiator, right? (hehe, 'cause there is) I dunno, it seems like a lot of coolant, but I'll think about it as I install these headlights and see if my pea-sized intellect can grasp the concept. Thx.
From what I've learned, that is basically just a recovery tank or pickup tank. When the engine is running and the cooling system is working harder to maintain operating temperature, it will flow more coolant, so it takes it from the pickup, then as the engine is cooling down, the level in the pickup will rise, because that's basically where some of it sits while the engine is off.
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ummm, yeah. i would be on it. thats why they fill it up when they do a tune up or oil change. its a reservior so when your radiator needs more it will just drink it up
when the car get to operating temp and the pressure of the coolant increase the valve in the radiator cap opens sending the vapors to the catch tank (reservior) and as the car cools down and pressure drops this causes a vacum and sucks coolant out and back into the radiator.
i havent checked but there should be 2 max lines. cold and warm line. the top line would be warm bottom line would be cold.
on the reservoir bottle (ours anyway, you are right and I've seen two lines on GMs), there's only one line, running from the neck of the radiator. I think that when it needs it, it probably just sucks coolant out of the bottle using some force of chemistry or physics I should probably still remember, but don't. The only thing that puzzled me was, I hadn't driven my car all day, and only started it up to move it into the garage, and it ran for about a minute or so once pulled in. Granted, it was hot yesterday, but I dunno, didn't see right. From what all you guys are saying though, it was normal after all.
Antifreeze (or coolant as some of you call it) expands and contracts depending on the temp of the antifreeze. The hotter the antifreeze is, the more it expands. The cooler the antifreeze is the more it contracts. As the engine heats up, the antifreeze heats up also, so it expands and needs more room. That is when the excess antifreeze goes into the overflow bottle. When the engine sits and cools down, the antifreeze contracts, so it needs less room. That is when the antifreeze gets sucked back into the radiator. That is why there are marks on the overflow bottle for both cold and hot (maybe not on the preludes, but there are on other cars).
Think of it this way, if you were to take a pot and fill it to the rim with water, then heat it up, it would spill out as it got hotter. After that, if you were to let that same pot of water cool down to room temperature, the water would not be to the rim anymore. But if you had a pan underneath the pot to catch all the water that spilled out when it was heated up, you can save that water and put it back into the pot so that the pot would be completely filled again. This way, you wouldn't have to go to the sink to get more water.
That's why there is an overflow bottle attached to the radiator. If there was no overflow bottle, you would have to refill the radiator everytime after you drive it because you would lose some everytime the engine heats up.
I'm thinking it requires a higher pressure (ie, hotter coolant) to open it and release coolant into the reservoir, resulting in a cooloer running temp, sound right? Hey, if it turns out to do nothing, it sure looks nice
Originally posted by i3luemrld so.... whats a higher presure radiator cap do then? Like my spoon raditaor cap
its 1.35, and stock is 1.1
the higher pressure cap does what it says. creates higher pressure in the cooling system. this increases the boiling temp bc everyone 1 lb of pressure raises the boiling temp 13 degrees. this makes your engine run at a hotter temp.
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