How does the S car cooling system work?
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01-15-2012 | 12:45 AM
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From: Peoria AZ
How does the S car cooling system work?
I just changed the pressurized expansion tank on my 1994 Saturn and in doing so I investigated what thought was the over flow tube that runs from it around to the firewall and then across the front of the fire wall to apparently some form of a tap that goes into the cooling water that is in the intake manifold.
I was looking to see this line as going into an overflow tank where it would function as I expected an over flow tank to work
If the engine gets really hot the excess water would go into the over flow tank and when it cooled down it would be sucked back into the cooling system.
While my Saturn has on occasion gotten really hot I never had a problem where water escaped so it never dawned on me the thing does not have an over flow tank.
The filler tank located on the passenger side of the car is tapped into what appears to be a heater line. It is obviously remote from the radiator itself and is pressurized for sure. While it is not intuitively obvious that the expansion tank as it is called is tapped into a heater hose or something that looks like one, there is no reason why it should not function in that location. I am just not used to thinking that way. But the line that runs over to a tap on the intake manifold? What does that do. It is the line I fully expected to see going to an overflow tnk nd it doesn’t. On a radiator where the cap is actually on the radiator, that line would be above the pressure valve so that when the engine got hot, water pressure would override the pressure valve and go into an overflow tank. It was obvious when I took mine out and realized that there is not pressure valve in the cap and this line was just tapped into the plastic tank with a hole that it did not work the way I thunk it should.
So
anyone know how it is supposed to work? I gots some reading to do.
Thanks for any help on this one
I was looking to see this line as going into an overflow tank where it would function as I expected an over flow tank to work
If the engine gets really hot the excess water would go into the over flow tank and when it cooled down it would be sucked back into the cooling system.
While my Saturn has on occasion gotten really hot I never had a problem where water escaped so it never dawned on me the thing does not have an over flow tank.
The filler tank located on the passenger side of the car is tapped into what appears to be a heater line. It is obviously remote from the radiator itself and is pressurized for sure. While it is not intuitively obvious that the expansion tank as it is called is tapped into a heater hose or something that looks like one, there is no reason why it should not function in that location. I am just not used to thinking that way. But the line that runs over to a tap on the intake manifold? What does that do. It is the line I fully expected to see going to an overflow tnk nd it doesn’t. On a radiator where the cap is actually on the radiator, that line would be above the pressure valve so that when the engine got hot, water pressure would override the pressure valve and go into an overflow tank. It was obvious when I took mine out and realized that there is not pressure valve in the cap and this line was just tapped into the plastic tank with a hole that it did not work the way I thunk it should.
So
anyone know how it is supposed to work? I gots some reading to do.
Thanks for any help on this one
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