Cooling system holding pressure?

Digitalchaos

Registered User
Today when opening the radiator cap it was under pressure & some coolant spilled out. I hesitated, then opened it all the way. This would be normal, except that the engine has not run since around 12:00 am the previous evening. It is currently 4:00pm the next day, hence it has had 18 hours.

I have never seen a cooling system hold pressure this long, on my SC or any other car before. It seems abnormal.. is it?
 
That is odd!! I've never seen that before.
Maybe you had a small air bubble trapped in the top tank on the rad and when you opened it the bubble escaped spilling some coolant when you removed the cap.:confused:
 
Might want to check the hose from the rad to the coolant recovery tank is not plugged with gunk. If it is the pressure cap is doing nada for you.

As far as why you have the pressure it could be the hose became plugged after the engine cooled and effectively was "over" filled since there was no where for the coolant to go when it heated and expanded. It woulkd not take much in the way of pressure to burp some coolant out under that scenario.
 
Ya know...

Ever since I've owned my car, it has always done that.

The car would be cold and when I'd open the Radiator cap, a small amount of coolant would burp out. I did recently repalce my overflow hose due to the old ones' "T" fitting (neccessary for the 95 to 89 conversion) had a crack and my coolant level was decreasing.

I've also replaced my radiator cap since about a year or so ago it was leaking.

And of course last year I replaced my timing cover gasket as it was leaking coolant too. That was a long job.
 
Recently something was leaking coolant, as my reservoir was very low. My radiator cap is new, and the first thing I thought of after hitting the post button was a clogged recovery hose, lol. Guess I'll check that. I figured this might not be anything significant except for the fact that it really hasn't happened before.
 
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