Heat is the enemy of your car’s engine, so you want to do everything that you can to avoid it. Lakelands Tire & Auto has some information that you can use regarding the causes of overheating.
Too Little Coolant
If there isn’t enough coolant circulating throughout the cooling system, it won’t be able to keep up with removing heat from the engine of the car, which leads quickly to overheating. How can you tell that you need to add coolant? The coolant reservoir holds overflow, and it also makes it easy to see whether your coolant levels are low or not. Just look at the line on the side of the reservoir and note whether the coolant is above or below that line.
Failing Cooling System
Even with enough coolant, though, the cooling system has to be working properly in order for it to keep your car’s engine cool. If there’s a leak or if any of the individual components are not working properly, that means that the cooling system isn’t going to be able to remove enough heat rom the engine. Various different parts can fail, so you may need to have your overheating issues properly diagnosed to find out exactly what’s going on.
Failed Thermostat
There’s one small part that you probably never think about, but when it fails, you can have big problems with an overheating engine. Your car’s thermostat is basically an “on or off” device and it controls the flow of coolant. Eventually, it can fail, bringing that whole cooling process to a halt pretty quickly. If that happens, you may find your car overheating.
Missing Vital Routine Services
Routine preventative maintenance is the key to keeping your car’s systems running at peak efficiency for as long as possible. Some of those services have multiple functions, like oil changes. Changing your car’s oil keeps the engine protected, lubricated, and clean. It also offers one more layer of cooling protection for the engine, helping the cooling system to keep your car’s engine at optimal temperatures. Prolonging the time in between oil changes can lead to issues with overheating.
Not sure what’s causing your vehicle to run hotter than it should? Let Lakelands Tire & Auto in Greenwood, SC help you diagnose the problem. We’ll thoroughly test your car and determine what’s going wrong so that we can help you to get it fixed as quickly as possible.