Most Likely Cause for Overheating With no Leaks & Good Fan and Belt?

[Swifty Morgan]

My 16 Limited got hot today while I was waiting to receive a Whopper that cost what a pizza and two-liter cost in 2017. I pulled into a space and let it cool while I ate. I took a look, and there were no obvious leaks. The fan worked fine. I could not check the coolant. I don't know if the reservoir is supposed to be transparent or what, but I couldn't see a thing.

This car's thermostat had to be replaced a couple of years back.

What's the most likely issue? I'm going to check the oil and coolant levels when it cools off.

This car has those stupid louvers on the radiator. I read up on them. I read they get you--no joke--about 0.5 mpg by making the engine run extremely hot. Car makers had to do it to meet ridiculous fleet standards. I am thinking of disabling them in the open position.

To make things worse, the local Burger King is putting water in the ketchup. Unbelievable.

 

[Swifty Morgan]

For background, I drove this thing at 75 for several minutes, and then I ended up stuck on an exit ramp for maybe 5 more. Very hot weather.

When I got in the car after eating, the temperature was okay, but it started to rise after I started it. Then it dropped pretty quickly and did not overheat on the 3-mile drive home, most of which was at 50 or above. I turned off the AC for the drive home.

The radiator louvers were closed when I started the engine.

 

[Swifty Morgan]

The car is cool enough to look at, so I checked it out. Could use a little more oil, but it's in the correct range. Coolant a little low.

The car had a thick foam rubber sweater on the engine. I avoid working on this car, so I had no idea. I thought it was thin, hard plastic. Incredible. I removed it. Seems really stupid, especially in Florida. I jammed the louvers open because I don't trust them and don't care about 0.5 mpg.

Maybe I'll stick a 180-degree thermostat in it so it won't go from okay to overheated as fast. I will top off the coolant.

I don't understand why it started to get hot on the way home and then cooled off.

 

[mountaineer2004]

The car is cool enough to look at, so I checked it out. Could use a little more oil, but it's in the correct range. Coolant a little low.

The car had a thick foam rubber sweater on the engine. I avoid working on this car, so I had no idea. I thought it was thin, hard plastic. Incredible. I removed it. Seems really stupid, especially in Florida. I jammed the louvers open because I don't trust them and don't care about 0.5 mpg.

Maybe I'll stick a 180-degree thermostat in it so it won't go from okay to overheated as fast. I will top off the coolant.

I don't understand why it started to get hot on the way home and then cooled off.

Could the thermostat have failed again?

Let's see what happens now that you've removed the artic sweater from your engine and opened up its lungs to breathe cool air.

 

[texsn95]

After you top off the coolant, mark the level when cool, and monitor to make sure you aren't losing any coolant over the summer. If so you've got other issues, been there done that.

 

[Odrapnew]

For background, I drove this thing at 75 for several minutes, and then I ended up stuck on an exit ramp for maybe 5 more. Very hot weather.

When I got in the car after eating, the temperature was okay, but it started to rise after I started it. Then it dropped pretty quickly and did not overheat on the 3-mile drive home, most of which was at 50 or above. I turned off the AC for the drive home.

The radiator louvers were closed when I started the engine.

Temp rising and then dropping quickly sounds like you might have had an air bubble in the system or the thermostat was sticking.
If there's an air bubble before the thermostat, it won't open at the correct temperature.
It may (and sounds like it did) crack open and bleed the air out at which time hot coolant hits it and opens the thermostat.

Just a thought.

 

[peterk9]

My 16 Limited got hot today while I was waiting to receive a Whopper that cost what a pizza and two-liter cost in 2017. I pulled into a space and let it cool while I ate. I took a look, and there were no obvious leaks. The fan worked fine. I could not check the coolant. I don't know if the reservoir is supposed to be transparent or what, but I couldn't see a thing.

.......................................

I believe most coolant reservoirs are somewhat translucent to allow the user to check the coolant level against the marks on the tank.
I the oil on the dipstick appears to be contaminated then you could have a water pump issue. Hopefully, that is not the case.

Peter

 

[410Fortune]

I was gonna say failing water pump

Plugged radiator
Cardboard in front of radiator (don’t laugh it happens more then you think people put it there and forget or sell the vehicle)

 

[Swifty Morgan]

What the frick is wrong with Ford, putting an inch of foam rubber on the engine? Are they insane? If you're going to insulate the engine, what is the point of the radiator?

I always wondered why the engine area was like a pizza oven. Hottest car I have ever seen. First really hot car I've ever seen, for that matter. I mean, best of luck to Mother Gaia and all that, but this is idiocy. I would rather lose three mph than boil my battery and roast all the cheap plastic under the hood every time I drive. I've always heard batteries lasted three to five years, but I've always gotten seven or more until I got this car. What battery can survive in a rolling pottery kiln?

I can't believe the engine was cooling at all. It must have the greatest cooling system known to man. Every time I drove, it was like it was cooling four engines.

Those radiator louvers are the product of mental illness. I'm sure they're great if you live on Neptune, but I live in Florida. I will keep an eye on them and make sure they are always forced open. I should take shears and cut them out.

It looks like we are literally paying car makers extra to destroy our expensive vehicles prematurely.

The car hasn't had another conniption since the day I wrote my post. Maybe the bubble theory is right.

At least my car isn't sending Lexis Nexis my driving data so my insurance can go even higher, it can't be bricked, and the government can't shut my car off. I guess I'm better off than some people.

Thanks for the help.

 

[peterk9]

It is called an Appearance Cover. It is not designed to be an insulator for the engine. It is fully removable. In fact, newer models don't have them. There are members of the Linvoln forum who are actively looking to buy them.
The shutters are there to aid in engine warmup, especially in winter. To a lesser degree, they also are to provide a small increase in mpg by closing at highway speeds to.make the vehicle a little more aerodynamic.
I haven't had issues with either item.

Peter

 

[Swifty Morgan]

It is called an Appearance Cover. It is not designed to be an insulator for the engine. It is fully removable. In fact, newer models don't have them. There are members of the Linvoln forum who are actively looking to buy them.
The shutters are there to aid in engine warmup, especially in winter. To a lesser degree, they also are to provide a small increase in mpg by closing at highway speeds to.make the vehicle a little more aerodynamic.
I haven't had issues with either item.

Peter

It's an extremely effective heat insulator, regardless of what they call it. The R-value must be tremendous, whereas the best R-value for the engine and cooling system is zero. It's the opposite of a heat sink, which is what a radiator is.

This stuff is about like neoprene, which, inch for inch, has an R-value higher than attic insulation. It probably is neoprene.

Now I know why the electric fan kept running after the engine was shut off. The car was wearing the fan out and draining the boiling battery, desperately trying to get rid of excess heat. If the car is happy running extremely hot, why does it keep trying to get rid of heat after I shut it down? Why would they program it that way? If all that heat is good, we should want the car to stay hot when parked.

The shutters are there to raise fleet efficiency by a tiny and unhelpful degree at the expense of car owners. The shutters are not there to make the car perform better or last longer, as every mechanical part should do. They seem dangerous to me. What if your shutters lock up while you're driving across the desert?

If you live in Canada, it's understandable that you wouldn't have problems caused by these design oddities. The temperature in Toronto is 55 right now, and it was 94 when my car tried to boil over. We get weather that hot well into September, and sometimes we see it in months that are usually cooler. Places like Arizona are much worse.

My car warms up in about a mile and a half, after I leave my driveway and get up to 60. That seems soon enough for me.

Until I got this car, I never saw a car that got so hot, it was painful to touch the hood prop stick when the engine was warm.

 

[Swifty Morgan]

The web says Europeans have these things because they protect pedestrians whose heads collide with car hoods. I am not making that up. Your head hits the hood, the hood hits the quadruple yoga mat on top of the engine, and you get a slightly less serious concussion. I would have thought that if your head was hitting a car hood hard enough to slam it into the hard manifold, there wasn't much hope for you.

The site that says this is not The Onion.

It also says the foam blocks noise. I can't tell the difference. My Explorer makes outrageous road and wind noise. Sounds fishy, and car dealers lie to us so much these days, I have ample reason to doubt it.

Finally, I think I found the real goal: heating the engine up fast and keeping it hot produces tiny improvements in exhaust pollutant levels. But mileage must also be a goal, since the radiator shutters also heat the engine, and they are known to be a desperate mileage gimmick.

 

[peterk9]

Apart from the area that the cover takes up, the rest of the engine is wide open. I don't recall ever having the extreme heat issues you refer to. The fans of the Explorers I had ran no longer than a few seconds, when they ran at all, after shutdown.
If you have the cover on yours, why not remove it?

Peter

 

[FordFlintrock]

My 16 Limited got hot today while I was waiting to receive a Whopper that cost what a pizza and two-liter cost in 2017. I pulled into a space and let it cool while I ate. I took a look, and there were no obvious leaks. The fan worked fine. I could not check the coolant. I don't know if the reservoir is supposed to be transparent or what, but I couldn't see a thing.

This car's thermostat had to be replaced a couple of years back.

What's the most likely issue? I'm going to check the oil and coolant levels when it cools off.

This car has those stupid louvers on the radiator. I read up on them. I read they get you--no joke--about 0.5 mpg by making the engine run extremely hot. Car makers had to do it to meet ridiculous fleet standards. I am thinking of disabling them in the open position.

To make things worse, the local Burger King is putting water in the ketchup. Unbelievable.

Just for the record whenever A/C is operating the shutters will always be open as condenser must have the air flow.
Call the Dealer with your VIN and inquire about a recent TSB and/or campaign concerning the high speed fan relay/wiring. When checking for recalls on my 3.5 Duratec they asked if I was having issues with mine.

 

[Swifty Morgan]

The car acted like it was hot again today. First time since I removed the overheating accelerator and jammed the louvers open.

I have heard that earlier versions of the car don't have the louvers or the rubber jacket. I know Ford put them in as a way of caving in to the government. That is not disputed. It's not like Ford's engineers looked at earlier models and said, "This car still needs a foam insulator on the engine, and shutters to keep air away from the radiator.." A guy on Youtube put a screw in one of his louvers to make it impossible for them to close.

I don't think there is any possibility the car is overheating, because the gauge reading drops within a couple of seconds once I get a little speed up. I'm no mechanic, of course, but it would surprise me if the sensor sees completely normal temperatures within 5 seconds of acceleration.

I've seen people saying removing the North Pole expedition jacket and opening the louvers won't affect the normal operating temperature. Perhaps that is true, but my gauge now reads slightly lower during ordinary driving conditions. I don't know how reliable the gauge is.

I haven't flushed the system or changed the thermostat yet, but since the system isn't overheating, I don't expect the thermostat to make any difference. I haven't had the time to do much of anything yet. I haven't even read the codes.

I'm going to check the wiring that goes to the temperature sensor (if any of it is exposed), but I doubt it's the problem, since the false alarms only happen on hot days when I'm not moving.

If I can find a mechanic around here who has a good reputation, I'll pay to get this problem fixed properly. I have been dealing with sudden landscaping crises and the need to arrange a mandatory trip.

 

[Swifty Morgan]

Fact for anyone who cares: my car warms up after about two minutes at 60. I go out a half-mile driveway at 20, and after that, I'm on the highway.

 

[FordFlintrock]

Thermostat for the 3.5L is 190 degrees. Under normal driving conditions the grill shutters adjust coolant temp to maintain 215°
So this means thermostat is always open with water pump constantly circulating coolant. I recently had my scan tool connected on highway drive, 75MPH cruise set and A/C on which is why low fan is on. For the eleven minute drive the coolant temp stayed within 213°-217° with shutter movement only, value 0 being closed and 100 fully open shutter. At some point will give more screen shots which include ambient temp, vehicle speed, trans oil temp, etc. Any forced blocking of shutter movement will likely set a code.

 

[peterk9]

The car acted like it was hot again today. First time since I removed the overheating accelerator and jammed the louvers open.

................................................

So the issue wasn't due to the appearance cover or the shutters. My thought all along was that the vehicle has another problem which you seem to have confirmed. I hope it gets resolved. Good luck.

Peter