about three weeks ago, my '96 disco I started squeeling whenever I accelerated in gear. the squeeling gets louder and quicker as you increase speed, however there's no squeeling when you rev the engine in neutral. this week after a lot of around town driving in the heat, my rover overheated. the expansion tank cracked so i replaced it. i figured the squeeling was coming from loose drive belts which also made the car overheat. i tightened the belts, filled the radiator with coolant, started the car, and it idled at the right temperature. when i drove the car around, it still squeeled and when i parked it, the engine temp began to rise. i reved the engine while parked and the engine temp shot up significantly. i loosened the cap on the expansion tank to keep the boiling coolant from breaking the tank again.

anyone familiar with this problem? any help would be grealty appreciated.

 

Could be either a water pump bearings or belt tensioner. Get a mechanics stethoscope and place the probe on the waterpump and listen to it, if it is the bearings it will make a grinding sound at idle.

 

allright, i will go pick one up tomorrow. if the bearings arent bad then i shouldn't hear anything? and i'll see if i cant check out the tensioner tomorrow as well.

 

Don't just start shooting parts at your truck, test it first.
Take hold of the fan blade, wiggle it, is there slop in it, like the water pump bearing is loose??? Next, crawl under the truck and see if you are leaking coolant fromt the water pumps weep hole??
Have you bled the air out of you engine?
Try this, fill up the coolant bottle to the top, replace the cap, start you engine, turn the heater to the hottest position and higest fan speed, let the engine warm up on it's own. Now when the engine is hot, how hot is the heater at an idle, if not very hot what happens if you run the RPM's up to 2000 for 10 seconds????
If you have a cool heater at idle, you usually have air trapped in the engine. Have you opened up the screw on top of your radiator and let out the air?
Mike

 

this is just not my day.

I checked the fan blade for wiggle or slop and couldnt find any, so the bearings see allright. i managed to bleed the engine like you said mike, but the radiator cap broke in the process so now i cant get it running until tomorrow. figures that it's sunday and the dealership is closed. i tried to tighten the belts but it seems like the tensioner isnt having any effect.

 

Well, glad the water pump is OK, sorry about the radiator cap. Let us know how it goes.
Mike

 

i managed to jerry-rig the cap so it'll work for today. the car is idling just fine right now. the heat is coming out nice and strong from the vents. i revved it the engine up to 2k rpms and it didnt overheat. i'll see if i cant drive it around the block once and keep it from overheating. if i do, i'll keep you updated.

thanks for the help so far

 

as i wrote that last one, the rover overheated. coolant was pouring out of the reservoir. im confused as to why it takes 10-15 min for it to start overheating. i figure that it's probably the waterpump since it seems like instead of flowing through the radiator and engine, the coolant keeps gettign put back into the reservoir. does this make sense or am i totally off?

Extremely dissapointed,
chris

 

Are you sure your A/C condensor fans are working?

 

you know, i thought they were but i was thinking of the fan attached to the water pump, so im not sure. i'll go out and check it out asap. thanks.