84 2.8L overheating badly

[Colin]

I bought this vehicle a few months back and had an awful job getting it smogged. My smog tech told me he had fitted a new thermostat because it was running too cold. Not long after this I had to replace the water pump and found a very old thermostat inside that housing! Hmmmmmmm, did my smog tech rip me off? I thought. Well I replaced that old one and put it all back together again and filled it up with coolant. I used a garden hose to force water up into the engine and into the radiator by disconnecting the bottom heater hose down by the water pump and holding the garden hose up into this heater hose. When water started running out of the radiator cap hole I assumed that everything was full of water. However, when I drove it next the temp guage went up to the very top of the normal scale, and after I sat for a while and got going again it dropped to normal, and the radiator was still full of water when I checked it. Well, that happened two or three more times and when I was at my friends house I checked the radiator again and it was down a little so I dribbled water into the radiator from a hose to fill it up and it would get up to almost full and then suddenly pressurize and come pouring out of the cap hole and I could hear sounds like cold water coming in contact with very hot metal. It eventually allowed me to get the level right up to full, and I drove off but within a mile the engine started missing and then making very bad noises so I shut it off and had it towed home.

I proceeded to take the water pump off to make sure it was not faulty, but in the process I took the housing on top of the intake manifold off where the top heater hose and radiator hoses are connected, and lo and behold there was a new thermostat fitted into the intake manifold at this point. My question now is.........with this thermostat in place, did it prevent me from actually filling the engine with water when I replaced the coolant after my job. If so, then I had a huge air gap in the system which would have meant that the engine had no water in it at all, to start with at least, until these two thermostats opened. Then when they opened, what little water was in the radiator was nowhere near enough to cool down the engine once it started flowing. And of course the engine would have been almost red hot and the water from the radiator would have been stone cold so one can imagine what that would do. And the other question is..... could the presence of this extra thermostat cause my overheating problems? As fas as I can ascertain, it would have done so, and if so I should go back to my smog tech and ask him to repair the damage done to my heads as a result of overheating. Since I took this extra thermostat out I have been loosing coolant like crazy due to pressurizing of the cooling system and when I stop and open the hood the overflow tank is bubbling like crazy, almost like it was full of boiling water. And it forces the coolant out of that tank and sprays it all over the place.

Am I thinking along the right lines here? Or am I way off? I know some of you guys are incredibly intelligent when it comes to mechanics and you may be able to advise me here. Sure would appreciate it. Thanks.

[BIIPAPA]

My son has a '93 Ford ranger that we had trouble filling the cooling system with water with the suggested thermostat installed. I have fooled around with car engines for over 50 years and I have never personally seen a thermostat without some means of venting the air out of the block while filling it with coolant. Most stats have a small notch or hole to allow for this so I drill a tiny hole in the thermostat flange and we filled the system without any more trouble. I know this doesn't answer you question but every little bit of knowledge is useful.

[Falec70]

take out your thermostat and drop it into a pot of boiling water to make sure that it opens to let the water through. put actual antifreeze into the radiator not just water the water boils off overtime. on the main hose from the radiator to the engine there should be a little circle notch that your can turn with a screwdriver. do this while the car is on and open and close it till it stops letting air out

[drofman]

with these bottom t-stat motors it's easier to fill them up thur the heater hose