"I didn't do step 10 in manual or step 2 according to Jamieb. I will do that tonight and report results tomorrow."

engine must be stone cold with no residual pressure built up, which is why most folks speak about doing it in the morning.

follow the instructions that these guys have given and you should be good. may need to do the whole process 2, 3 or 4 times (over that many days), but it should get you there. good luck.

 

I would be a bit careful.

There is a chance your temps are rising because you have engine damage because you are relying on false information of what constitutes 'overheated'.

Your dash gauge has three settings. Engine off, engine running, and engine damaged. Yours is starting to point towards the latter.

You say you swapped your thermostat because it was looking a bit old. Was this in conjunction with the dash gauge rising, so you thought 'I'll swap the thermostat'?

First thing I would do, is get a grip on just what temp you are dealing with. Research here what others have, compare it to your system etc.

Maybe it's just me. But I can't afford another car, so I make a lot of effort looking after the one I've got.

 

when i was adding coolant the first time i filled the over flow tank, and then removed the bleed screw on the upper hose and kept adding coolant to that. it takes a long time and its very slow going, but i would keep poring till i noticed the over flow tank starting to fill up more and id stop, re install the bleed screw and start the truck then just add to the over flow tank as needed. was able to get 2 full gallons of 50/50 mix into the system.

you can get those cheap obd2 blue tooth scanners on amazon and ebay for $12 to$30. its prob a good idea to have to be able to check temps while doing this.

 

Response to Cappedup.

The temperature gauge was working fine before I swapped out the thermostat. No over heating. Since then, the temp gauge has gone up 4-5 times and I promptly shut engine off. Twice it red lined and I pulled over and cooled down. Do you think engine is toast?

 

The thing many of us (myself included) learned the hard way was that our temp gauge does not move to hot until AFTER the engine overheats. We would think that as the engine is getting too hot, the gauge would move up to warn us. Nope. Our gauge moves after the engine has overheated.

There is a big difference between the engine is toast and just needs new head gaskets. One of the most common questions when buying a used disco, is "when were the head gaskets done" because most have overheated and had the head gaskets replaced. It stems from a thermostat that allowed the engine to run too warm by bad design.

If your Disco overheated and warped the head gaskets, welcome to the club.

So how do we monitor temps? For those who had this happen, we get electronic gauges like the Ultra Gauge, Scan Gauge or similar and it plugs into the OBD II port to monitor temps. Others get a mechanical gauge tapped into the cooling system. With electronic gauges, you can set alarms to go off at certain temps. That and get a thermostat called a 180- thermostat that opens up at 180 degrees. The factory thermostat allows the engine to run too warm and opens up around 194 I think.

 

Once you figure out how to pop the coolant tank out things get easier.

 

No, your engine isn't toast. But you may have damaged the head gaskets.

First, you don't know how hot your engine has been running before the thermostat swap. The needle doesn't move from the centre, until the temperature is higher than baaaad.

Second, you don't know how hot it got when you were trying to bleed the air and it redlined, but that is definitely baaaad.

There is a high likelihood you got away with it. That yes, the temp spiked too high, but you shut down quick, and it is just trapped air that is shooting the temps up. But I wouldn't want to risk running it, knowing you have an issue which is resulting in high. Temps. Without knowing what those temps are.

I used to run at about 194-201. I hated see it go over 200 (psychological), have recently installed an inline thermostat and now temps top out at about 183.

I recently bled my cooling system same as you are doing. I got trapped air, and saw 210. I was able to shut it down. If I had left it running, the needle would have moved north and I would have been in engine damaging territory. I let it cool. Started again with heater on and it burped a bubble to the reservoir. All good since.

Don't panic, but be concerned.

 

"First, you don't know how hot your engine has been running before the thermostat swap. The needle doesn't move from the centre, until the temperature is higher than baaaad."

strange, but true. if the temp gauge is showing above center, it's already overheated.

 

No...your temp gauge has never worked...you only thought that it did. When I was new to the Disco I had the water pump go out, overflow tank cracked and the top hose assembly broke off at the Tee all within 2 weeks. I have seen steam and the gauge was still reading average temp. By the 3rd week I had something else to monitor the engine temp and I was on here reading through the archives for hours every night until I either fixed or became aware of everything this truck will do to suicide itself; and there is a short list. I'm honestly surprised you haven't done major damage yet. It doesn't take much. Maybe you will figure out the drive-shaft thing if you get through this dilemma unscathed.

 

Haha! Yes, that is one way to say it.