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The day I figured out why my cheap Volvo kept overheating was a Tuesday afternoon in March
I had this 1998 Volvo V70 I bought for $900. It would run fine for 20 minutes then the temp gauge would climb. I replaced the thermostat, the water pump, even flushed the system twice. Nothing worked. Then a guy at the Pick-N-Pull told me to check the coolant cap. Turns out the stock cap lets coolant escape at 15 psi but a bad one opens too early and causes the system to lose pressure which makes it boil. I swapped it for a $8 cap at AutoZone and the problem went away. Has anyone else run into a simple fix like that where the obvious parts were not the real issue?
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violafox2mo ago
Yeah I read somewhere that radiator caps cause way more problems than people realize.
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christopher9522mo ago
oh man that is such a classic volvo thing lol. i had a 2000 s40 that would randomly overheat on the highway and i chased the same parts you did for like two months. ended up being a tiny crack in the expansion tank that only leaked when the engine was hot and under load. a $35 tank from fcp euro fixed it and i felt like such an idiot for not checking that first. it's wild how the simplest stuff gets overlooked when you're dead set on the big parts being the problem. glad you got it sorted for basically nothing though lol
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