Would anybody believe it if I said we were down on the AFB again?
Still trying to resolve Carlos' overheating issue. But apparently a bunch of other people wanted to do some wrenching too and beat us there. So while we waited for a bay to open up, we wandered over to the rec center. Shot some hoops for a bit until a bunch of young guys wanted to run full court.
Couple hours later, we got ourselves a bay and got to work. We'd already replaced the T-stat, water pump, and fan clutch. I gutted his old T-stat a couple of weeks ago, and we were going to put that in. Along with re-install his refurbed EBCM.
So now his ABS lights are off, and the pump doesn't run constantly like it was doing before. I brought my wobble extensions and we were able to get the T-stat off pretty quickly through the wheel well and didn't have to move the alternator. Going back in was a nightmare though. If I had some magnetic sockets, it would have been a breeze. But I don't, so we ended up rotating the alternator after all.
Put the gutted T-stat in, bolted things back up, then made the cardinal mistake. Put the alternator back, belt on, driver's wheel back on, torqued it down, and all that. THEN put coolant in the system. "Hey what's that splattering sound?" Coolant was pouring down the side of the engine.
Turns out the O ring dislodged as we were putting it in, got pinched and torn.
Pull the T-stat again, use the old O ring. It was a tad smaller than the groove it was supposed to go in, and we didn't have any gasket sealer to hold it in place. It was already after 3pm and the guy running the shop told us it closed at 4:30. So we took the gamble. Tried to hold it in place by hand as we seated the T-stat. Tightend everything to spec, and added more coolant. More splattering. S.O.B.
So I let Carlos and our friend Marc take the EXT to Autozone to get more coolant, take the old T-stat to get a new O ring that fit and some gasket sealer. So I sat there... Took this pic cuz I was bored and my back was hurting.
I got the T-stat back out before they got back. Sure enough the misfitted O ring was also pinched and caused the leak. We got the new O-ring in, no leaks, and out of the shop just at 4:30.
But... After Carlos got home, he called to let me know his coolant got up to 228 degrees when parked in his garage. Fresh out of ideas, he'll be taking his XUV to the stealership next week for a proper diagnosis. Fearing blown head gasket maybe...