6 Common Causes of Engine Overheating
Seeing the temperature gauge creep up? An overheating engine is serious trouble. When ignored, it can lead to extensive repair bills and even complete engine failure.
This article explores the most common causes of engine overheating to help you in your troubleshooting efforts as well as signs you need to be watching for to recognize the early stages of overheating before any damage occurs.
6 Common Causes of Engine Overheating
Below are the top 6 causes of an overheated engine. Once you understand these common causes, you will know where to look so that you can fix the cause of the problem right away. It is better to do this sooner rather than later or else your engine might never function the same again.
#1 – Coolant Leak
Your engine depends on coolant to stay cool as it is running. There is an entire cooling system which keeps the coolant flowing smoothly. You have a water pump, radiator, thermostat, hoses, and a head gasket that make this all happen.
If any of these components gets damaged or worn out, they might leak coolant out from them. This will result in an overheated engine. If the leak is small, you might be able to temporarily patch it up until you have time to bring your vehicle to the shop and replace that component.
#2 – Clogged Hoses
If your engine is overheating but there is no coolant leak, then you might have a clogged coolant hose. This might happen if sediment or dirt from the road inadvertently got into the hose. This will block the coolant fluid from being able to flow through the system properly. Telltale signs of this are a cold lower radiator hose and/or cool upper hose.
#3 – Bad Water Pump
The water pump is the component which propels the coolant fluid so that it can flow in the cooling system. If the water pump is damaged or worn out, your engine will overheat from it. Check the impeller vanes or bump shaft because these are commonly the reasons for the water pump going bad. There may even be leaks too.
#4 – Faulty Radiator
The radiator is what transfers heat out of the hot coolant so that it can cycle back into the engine and cool it down again. If you have a bad radiator, the coolant liquid is going to stay hot. This means the engine is going to stay hot as well.
Sometimes a radiator might have a broken fan which prevents the hot air from escaping. Other times, there are leaks or clogs in the radiator or even a faulty radiator cap. All this leads to an overheated engine.
#5 – Wrong Coolant
You might not see any leaks or faulty components at all, but still notice your engine overheating. If you put new coolant fluid in your vehicle recently, then perhaps you used the wrong antifreeze (or an internal oil leak is mixing with coolant). The best thing you can do is flush your entire cooling system and then add the right cooling fluid back into the system.
#6 – Low Engine Oil
As stated earlier, motor not only acts as a lubricant between the moving components inside an engine, it acts keeps internal temperatures at bay.
If your engine has too low of an amount of oil (or old oil that’s deteriorated enough), excess friction will be the result which drastically raises the engine temperature. This can ultimately result in overheating and internal engine damage.
