trouble burping the old buick

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[SofaKingWeToddDid]

Ok, what will make it so a car doesnt wanna burp? i got a feelin its a stuck thermostat or plugged rad.

first off, there was a little cap thinggy behind the Plenum on top of the rear valve cover, it was sort of a T line into one of the heater hoses (and made of shit ass plastic) well, one end broke off somehow. and buddy just jammed it back in the hose and kept driving. so now he asked if i could tighten the hose clamp, and as soon as i touched it, it fell apart! lol so. the car lost probably 80% of its coolant or better and now i cant seem to get it to burp. the upper rad hose gets ALOT of pressure, it kinda feels like a balloon. lol the one bleeder i can find just sits there steaming for minutes on end (with the car at the TOP of the heat gauge) it wont shoot out any coolant! then when i gave up and shut the car off, it kinda gurgled... for like 20 seconds, then i tried again, as soon as i opened the bleeder, coolant... 2 seconds later, back to the same steam as usual. any thoughts?
im thinkin thermostat or plugged rad. i would love to get this taken care of as easily as possible. i hate the smell of coolant.

[Prospeeder]

Plugged radiator? nooooo Stuck thermostat, yea probably stuck because theres a huge air pocket behind it and it cant heat up to open. Take the thermostat out and drill a little hole in it so the air can get by.

Also I have had good luck in my 3.1 cars by filling the system up as much as possible, and then putting the cap on, and filing overflow, and massaging all the hoses and revving the engine and I can watch all the air bubbles comming up out of the overflow untill no more bubbles appear. Good luck! Hope you didnt blow a headgasket and its superheated combustion gasses filling the system.....

[SofaKingWeToddDid]

its a 3800 though... will that still work? and screw drilling it. lol when i was at crappy tire buying his hose thinggy i told the fawker to buy a thermostat and rad cap, did he listen?? no. now look where i am! haha 5:30 on a saturday night and i still smell like coolant!

[DiscoStudd]

Plugged radiator? nooooo Stuck thermostat, yea probably stuck because theres a huge air pocket behind it and it cant heat up to open. Take the thermostat out and drill a little hole in it so the air can get by.

Also I have had good luck in my 3.1 cars by filling the system up as much as possible, and then putting the cap on, and filing overflow, and massaging all the hoses and revving the engine and I can watch all the air bubbles comming up out of the overflow untill no more bubbles appear. Good luck! Hope you didnt blow a headgasket and its superheated combustion gasses filling the system.....

Couldn't have said it better myself.  However, when I "flushed" the coolant on my old 3800 (L27) Regal, I didn't even need to touch the bleeders at all.  I left the radiator cap open after I filled the system and ran it until the T-Stat opened and dropped the level in the radiator.  I topped it off and filled the puke can a bit over the HOT mark and she worked the air pockets out on her own.

T3h 60* V6's are the ones that are a PITA to burp!  It took me ~3 hours to burp all of the air out of my red Impy's cooling system when I changed out the coolant the last time.  It took another week of topping off the puke can to get 'er steady.  But yeah, it was the same deal where the needle almost pegged the gauge before the T-Stat opened...