How Can You Tell If Your Car Is Overheating?

The car engine in many cases determines the health of your car. Engine requires oil for it to work efficiently. It helps reduce the friction of metal parts, more so the rotating parts. Engine combustion creates a lot of heat that engine oil isn’t able to handle, as a result the coolant plays an important role in cooling the engine, but how can you tell if the engine is overheating?

Watch out for any abnormal smoke or steam off your car hood. The coolant burn out means there are some leaks form the cooling system, which may affect your engine dissipating heat. Abnormal temperature fluctuation, smell, engine noise and loss of acceleration power are symptoms of car running hot.

In this Blog post I’ll looks at some of the signs of reasons why my truck was overheating. The possible diagnosis you can use to fix the car overheating issue before it gets out of hand and blow your gasket.

Symptoms Of Car Overheating

If you are able to notice the symptoms of car overheating, it will help you address the underlying issue before stalling or even damaging your car engine further. Here are some of the signs to looks for if your car is overheating.

Engine noise

Overheating engine will thin out the engine oil reducing its ability to lubricate the moving parts effectively. This may in-turn cause a ticking noise in engine that may end up damaging your engine.

Burning coolant

Radiator malfunction, radiator hose, coolant reservoir leaks,

Steam from engine/smoke

Do you notice some smell and steam coming under your car hood? This is one of the symptoms of an overheated truck engine. Steams will get visible if there is coolant leakage, worn-out radiator, Holes or works out rubber pipes, or even leaks.  Perhaps the antifreeze is not circulation well or the radiator cap not well tightened or been lost. When the heat generated through combustion increases, it causes the engine to boil and emit steam.

I’d advise you stop driving immediately one you notice steam from under your car hood to avoid internal engine damages.  Determine the car overheating reasons and fix the issue before continuing with your journey.

Leaking coolant

It’s a good practice to looks for leaks when your car stops or generally in the morning before embarking on a journey. Engine leaks may happen at times, however, one of the symptoms of overheating is a antifreeze leaks.

• At times if you open your car hood you may see bubbling on your coolant reservoir.
• If you had checked the coolant before starting your car and later notice the coolant is above the earlier mark, it’s one of the symptoms and you need to get your car checked.
• If as for various reasons like pipe leaks the coolant is not enough to efficiently cool down the engine, it may cause engine temperature to rise to cause the engine to run hot.

Loss of power/poor acceleration

Loss of acceleration power may also be an indicator of truck overheating. Once the car overheats, the engine pistons cylinder bore expand limiting the crankshaft rotation. As a result, it limits the engine efficiency there by reducing the engine acceleration power when needed. If you have done normal engine service and experience such abnormal power-loss, check your cooling system.

Abnormal temperature gauge readings/above normal

All the vehicle has its internal mechanism to let you know when the car temperature is above normal readings. DO you notice your temperature gauge needle above the middle of your temperature gauge or near a red-coded zone? This is a clear sign that your car cooling system needs to be checked before it gets worse or even damages your car engine.