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Overheating 2005 Ford Ranger 2.3L

Discussion in 'General' started by Boman Forklift, Jul 6, 2022.

  1. sheepofblue

    sheepofblue Well-Known Member

    The bypass flows all the time so would be hotter first. Once up to temp the thermostat opens and the main hose flows.
     
  2. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    Yea that’s what I figured it was, especially after starting to take temps. Most of my mechanical skills came on air cooled bikes, and then my sons 2 strokes and I don’t remember any bypass stuff. For sure the RS 125 didn’t even have a thermostat, you just taped up the radiator.
     
  3. backcountryme

    backcountryme Word to your mother.

    Call up Esslinger Engineering and get a 2.3l Arca build engine. Then you will have a sleeper of a Ranger. That engine will easily make close to 400hp. We ran a similar setup in our USAC Midget for years.
     
  4. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    Hahaha!! Then I will start breaking 1000 other things. Plus it probably won’t pass smog.
     
    backcountryme likes this.
  5. backcountryme

    backcountryme Word to your mother.

    Oh, it definitely won't pass smog.
     
    beac83 and Boman Forklift like this.
  6. backcountryme

    backcountryme Word to your mother.

    But I can say without a shadow of a doubt, that 2.3l Lima engine has an amazing bottom end on it. The stock crank is good to over 300hp at 8000 rpm. Needs decent rods, but they are cheap. I had one in my mini stock when I was 14 and we twisted a junkyard bottom end to 7800 rpm and even blipped into the low 8000 range every now and then and the only issue we had was a blown head gasket one time. Then we built a midget engine with the turbo block so we could get a little more stroke, a forged Cola crank, Carrillo rods and an Esslinger ARCA head. It made right at 400hp at the wheels at 10500 rpm. We ran it at 9500 most of the time though. It was a little heavier then the Esslinger midget engine, but made about the same power at half the cost.
     
    Boman Forklift likes this.
  7. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    Don't see you as often on here anymore, are you still slinging fuel in Canada?
     
  8. notbostrom

    notbostrom DaveK broke the interwebs

    What did the impeller look like on the water pump?
     
  9. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    I forgot to address that. It looked good and it has a metal impeller. My buddie and I looked it over and didn't see anything wrong? It was dirty but no noticeable leak out of the weep hole. Spinning the outside area the pulley bolts to or the impeller turned the other end. I possibly should have put it in a vice to see if with some force they would disconnect? Unfortunately I did toss it over the weekend and it is gone now, so I can't do any more experimenting on that piece.
     
  10. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    So I plugged in the obdII reader and drove home. Started at 110 and hit 200 within a mile or so. At slow speeds I could see the fan was bringing temps down from about 240-220 or so. Once on the freeway 240-291. I hit that when I was going up an incline and I was pushing 90mph just to see what would happen. The high speed triggered the warning light so I let off and I could see the temp drop pretty quickly on the obdII gauge and then the light went back off.

    Unlike before that was the only time it triggered and I was pushing hard. However it wasn’t very hot today. The trip started around 84 and was 75-78 at home.

    At home with laser thermometer on the radiator at the upper hose entrance it was about 175 and on the other side it was 145.

    So the only issue seems to be at high speed, when the fan does nothing, either the radiator isn’t good enough to cool or the engine just gets too hot when stressed hard?

    Also tried to use my laser thermometer to get reading across the front and that is where the a/c condenser is and it was only in the 80s.
     
  11. notbostrom

    notbostrom DaveK broke the interwebs

    Back to my original air bubble suspicion or gunked up internally. Was it a decent new radiator or China?
     
  12. pickled egg

    pickled egg Tell me more

    And you did change out the stat while you were in there, correct?

    I’d say you got a shit radiator.
     
  13. evakat

    evakat Well-Known Member

    Cooling systems and simply just a water pump and lines... with a flow valve reducer (thermostat).
    Remove the thermostat and then drive it around to see if there is good flow.
    If not... then either line blockage or the water pump is failing.
     
  14. turner38

    turner38 Well-Known Member

    How hot was the cylinder head with the infrared??
    I guess step one would be to verify ECT and IAT correlate with each other and ambient on a cold start….
    290 is melt down range and you’ll get burnt oil smell and pushing water out, boiling over. If it hit 290 and wasn’t a gallon low of coolant when you checked the radiator, it most likely wasn’t at 290….
    Voltage drop all the grounds, especially battery to computer/chassis and chassis to engine, replace the ECT and see what happens.
    Have seen radiators where the fins lost adhesion to the tubes and just didn’t cool, if it is ACTUALLY running that hot I would warranty it out and try again.
    Those engines do
    Loose head gaskets now and again, but it’s rare they survive 290….
     
    cav115 likes this.
  15. BigBird

    BigBird blah

    Look up 86-91 MKIII/A70 Toyota Supra and Cressida 7MGE/7MGTE Headgasket failures. Toyota seems to not do well in this department. Once it had about 50-60K miles, needed a new headgasket. Ask me how I know, lol. We had 2 in our house and my 2 in our extended family.
     
    Boman Forklift likes this.
  16. cav115

    cav115 Well-Known Member

    At this point, yes, verify cold engine temp matches ambient, if so, either bad radiator (although you said you checked flow), or head gasket.

    If not, time to find gauge issue.

    Did you ever do the C02 test?
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
  17. cav115

    cav115 Well-Known Member

    He does have a new radiator, (as long as it`s not faulty).
     
  18. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    My parts guy ordered it, I am presuming it was from. O’reilly or Autozone. Probably Chinese like most everything else in the world.
     
  19. BigBird

    BigBird blah

  20. Boman Forklift

    Boman Forklift Well-Known Member

    Answers inside the quote.



    I think both you and Danny would have noticed the two temps don't match. I will verify this later today to make sure but seem to remember starting it once and while scrolling through the menus, noticed outside temp in the 60'/s but coolant was over 100 and I think I had just started it....but figured it must gain temp quickly. Will check again without starting to make sure.

    My best guess at this point is a sensor issue all along, but will do some more testing. Hopefully some others on here can learn from all this. One thing I have found interesting so far is how much the ECT varies but the gauge on the dash doesn't really move. Now my sensor maybe why, or the engineers may think a widely varying gauge would create more warranty requests? Once warm, it will vary from 210-280 and the dash gauge stays the same. Once over 270 it may raise a hair and then when I hit 290-295 it instantly pegged and the red light flashed. I let off the gas and coasted for probably 10 seconds and it dropped back down to 260 and the light went away and the gauge went right back into the middle range.

    I did not perform the CO2 test yet. I was going to and thought I had found the issue, so I didn't go buy the tester for it. That maybe a step after looking at the grounds. If you get a chance to read my responses above and don't mind educating me about the grounds, I would be very happy to learn the proper way to go about it.

    Thanks again everyone for your ideas and help.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
    cav115 likes this.

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