I'm still having overheating demons with the Charger, and the only thing left to do is a cooling system flush, along with replacing my OEM coolant bottle, which I now have a replacement for. Is it possible that the "cooling gunk" TSB from waaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day has reared its ugly head again, 4 years later, simply because I didn't change out the coolant tank back then??? EVERYTHING else has been replaced. Is a cooling system flush something I can do on my own at home?? I like to avoid going to a dealership WHENEVER possible, despite the AWESOME relationship I have with the service manager, and how much he respects my cars. If this is something I can do at home, I'd like some advice as to how to do it, so I can replace this old coolant bottle, and hopefully be past my cooling problems (I'm gonna go ahead and put a 4th new Tstat in there while I'm at it)!!! Thoughts? lease:
curious chase........ what brand t-stat are you using??? i know i am on my third stant t-stat right now due to them sticking from time to time...... i get the same "spike" in temps periodically.
It's not the old coolant thing Chase. Symptoms of that were: Ammonia smell and/or white foamy stuff floating in the tank white flakes in the coolant white coating on the inside of the tank "cottage cheese" in the coolant [<- that description wasn't in the Rapid Response ] All of the above were VERY noticeable visually (or nose if there was smell with it).
Chase, I can't believe you are still chasing (no pun intended) this water temp thing. I highly recommend that you allow your dealership to look at this for you. I still think you have an air pocket that is being a bitch.
If you still plan on doing your install I would do it for you no charge. You just pay for coolant.. Let me know. Or if you really want to do it yourself give myself or Dookie a call. And make sure you call one of us as there is a method to the madness
Thanks guys. I'm just gonna take this thing to the dealer for this. The service manager really looks after me, and I know he'll do what he's gotta do for me. And Scott, as for now, I've decided to stay N/A. We just couldn't get a blower kit put together, installed, and tuned for the budget I CURRENTLY have. We'll see what happens in April like originally planned......
Should have plenty to buy a DashDaq and gauges now. You need 'em anyway and you'll have that covered when you get around to the blower.
Dave, I'de swear you were on a commission program with them...If not, you should be. I doubt it's a stoubborn air pocket, those usually get beltched out after the 2nd to 3rd warm up cycle...while you may see some elevated temps while this is working itself out, it will eventually work itself out. Once that happens, you top off the overflow and you're done. Don't know if you every changed out the relays, if not, DO THAT FIRST. At that point, I would look into getting a new pump. Everything else is new.
lol, actually just a proponent of ANY adequate monitoring and logging. I just find it mind boggling that over and over again people are spending $5 to $15K or more on engine mods, then they balk at $1 - $2K of monitoring/logging stuff ("I'll get that later") and then after the autopsy it's "... turns out [this was happening] and caused this and this ... I think everybody gets into it with a tight budget, then their butt starts to pucker at all the extra/unexpected/unaccounted expenses that add up and the first thing off the list is the monitoring stuff 'cause it's a decent size chunk you don't have to have it to make it run. I'll just be careful...
I'm thinking of getting TWO Aeroforce gauges from Speedlogix, mounted in the new overhead console pod. Would you be okay with that? (I honestly don't mean that sarcastic, I genuinely want to know if you think that'd suffice). Obviously I have to get the wideband sensor as well..... Already been through 6 relays. And I have a BRAND NEW water pump from RockAuto sitting in my garage already. We'll see what happens after the coolant flush. I feel ya on this man. That's why I'm gonna go ahead and knock it out while I have the extra cheddar.
Yea... sortof... kindof... maybe. You need to plan for all the gauges and what you want to monitor. Initially, and ongoing. Something like boost you might only need initially and then maybe to check if you need to diagnose a problem later. Timing you might only need while getting the tune sorted out. Something like AFR or knock you're going to want "front and center" all the time. You might not be watching it all the time but you'd want to know instantly if it's an over threshold situation. Maybe temps too but not so much or not as immediate and they don't change as fast. Other OBDII parameters as well. If you're running to where some temps might go over if you're pushing it for too long, those might be inbetween type of things. Fuel pressure might be in the middle. Aeroforce I'm not really familiar with the capabilities. I think it's a fairly small, 2 parameters (out of some number of parameters) displayed at any given time. Might be adequate. I'm not big on putting some gauges up in the overhead console. When you're driving (especially when you're pushing it) you have to completely shift your attention from out the windshield to up to the console. Same thing with gauges down by the shifter. Unless it's at night, you're also making a shift from very bright to relatively dark ambient light. You can't just flick your eyes up there and immediately get a grip on some rather small numbers and what they're for. Ergonomics... That might be a good place for non immediate type of info. Like boost, or maybe temps that you don't expect to change in a hurry. For stuff where just a couple or few seconds can be the difference between an engine rebuild or not, you want them basically in your peripheral vision all the time. AFR, Knock, Oil pressure, etc. Not just immediately visible but with an alarm that will get your attention too. Ideally you want your whole gauge to flash red and get an audible alarm along with it -- something like that. Better yet is 2 or 3 stage alerts. Don't forget all this stuff is mostly critical in WOT mode. When you put your foot on the floor you don't have a lot of time to be lollygagging around looking for your gauges on the ceiling and waiting for your eyes to adjust or taking off your shades... (talk to Jon) Then you need some way to log EVERYTHING in a single log file (so the parameters are all synced). If something is spiking or happening you're going to want to see what a bunch of parameters were at one instance in time. Nice feature to have is either constant logging into a circular buffer or some amount of history. If you're doing something and something happens you want to be able to get a log that includes 10 seconds ago. Same if you're trying to catch something that's real intermittent. I think you need to be able to log at least 8 - 12 parameters at a time minimum. Ask around. Especially the guys that have blown things up. "Do you think you could have saved it (or minimized the damage) if you had been monitoring something that would have been reasonable to monitor?"
The aeroforce is okay, it doesn't log, so it's up to you to see it in real time while trying to actually drive. I usually get a passenger to vid my gauge while making a WOT burst on the hwy...not ver practical. Another thing about the aeroforce, is visability is very low during the day. Talk to Jon, he popped an engine partially because of this. If you have the samolias, get the Dashdaq. Period, no better system out. Dave, most people get on a dyno or data log on the street and trust the tuner to get things right and safe. If you don't change things from there, you really shouldn't need to be a nervous nelly and monitor things extremely close. If you do some more modification, you should be back on the dyno and/or logging.
Okay, so for the DashDaq to work, what else do I need??? Just a wideband sensor?? And how do I know which one (wideband sensor) to buy??? So confused, this is all new territory to me......
You're going to need a bunch Chase. You want to have a gauge system that all works together. You might try talking to Nathan (Redfox Racing). If he's not too busy studying at Nascar school. Don't know if he's still running his business or if that's on hold. Mol maybe? You're either going to need to spend some hours learning about it and what you want or get someone to consult and put a system together that meets your needs and preferences. You might do something like: Identify all the gauges you need that aren't already covered by the car's OBDII and sensors. Wideband AFR Fuel Pressure EGT? Boost? etc. Figure out what physical sensors you're going to need to add. Look into getting it all from one mfg or separate mfgs. Innovate, PLX, Fast, Zeitronix, etc. All have "systems" where you can daisy chain controllers (or displays) over a serial link. Maybe you end up using the analog outputs, depends. Some have better/easier logging capabilities than others. Some have better sensors or controllers. Some are more open to adding or tieing in to other makes of equipment. It's kind of like putting together a component stereo system. Then there is the display and user interface ...and logging. Think about the details. For example on the logging; stuff like can you take multiple logs without having to offload the previous one? Can you get the logs off the device? How? Are you going to have something you can email or get to a tuner and will they be able to read it? How long can one log be. We already talked about what you might want in a display. There's a good bit to it and it's not something you want to have to redo later because you weren't happy with it or it didn't do what you needed or wanted.
so what, you dont want him to shove a garden hose in his coolant bottle and open the coolant drain and flush away? that sounds right up chases ally hahaha
Chase, Dave and Kyle are correct. While the Aeroforce gauges monitor OBDII parameters, you can put only two per gauge displayed at a time (I have 2 gauges for a total of 4 parameters viewable.) You can also set the gauges to cycle through preset parameters if you want. I happened to get the red-lit gauges, and you can set them to be either red on black or black on red (basically reversed.) The data is just really hard to read, and I wouldn't feel comfortable studying what was going on while hammering it down the 1320. A couple of glances are about it and man, those numbers are pretty small...I'm not saying they are unreadable but it takes me a second to focus when all I want to be doing is reading at a glance. I have an Innovate WB all by itself and that is the one I can easily see (unless of course you have your tricky new orange face shield on, and the sun is shining directly on the gauge face, and sweat is pouring down your face burning your eyes...lol) Like I said earlier, if I was starting from scratch I would buy the Dashdaq even though it doesn't quite fit very well anywhere, IMHO.
I am in no way disputing what Dave, Kyle, and even Jon has stated, BUT, taking what Jon stated above, I tend to plug my Predator into my laptop and to the OBII and datalog my preferences that way. Already have the tools, so why spend the money on another datalogger? Just my .02 cents... The best part is that since I am using my laptop as the datalogger, all my files are already saved to my pc.
