1st Night Out: Terrible! Options

[turbohcar]

Tonight was the first night for the Talon. The first night on insurance and plates in the last three years. Everything started out right. I drove to town (about 12miles) to the nearest gas station where I met a friend of mine. I put some premium in her and discuss how happy I am that nothing has happened....yet. Rolling back down the main strip after filling up we make the long cruise to our get-off point. We came to several reds but this one was unlike any other. This one, the beast in me came out. I couldn't help it. The car wanted more than just cruising, and my right foot couldn't help but bury itself into the firewall. As quoted from my friend, "That thing shat and took off like a Tomahawk missle!" Cruising through town (another 4 miles) we got to the turn off and made our way to our destination. Just before we got to our destination (11 miles from town) the car started overheating. Not just "it's overheating a little bit it'll be fine till I get it looked at". NO, it's just humming along just fine, the temp gauge is reading straight up and down and then all the sudden it starts climbing like crazy. Logger showed it got up to 111*C (or 232*F) when it had been running at 96.8*C (206*F). I didn't know until just now that it was running that hot regularly but it didn't show any signs of overheating. I had the fans running all night as a precaution.

It has done this one other time though. Almost a year ago it overheated when I blew a heatercore hose. It climbed to the mark just before the red on the temp gauge and I nursed it home without going into the red to fix it.

At this point I'm tired. I've been wrenching all night and I want to go to bed. If any of you have any suggestions feel free. The cooling system is as follows:

2G aluminum radiator
brand new OEM Mitsu radiator cap
new thermostat with the rebuild
new (Felpro) headgasket with the rebuild
1G fans running full time
new coolant

Like I said, suggestions will be taken. Right now I'm just trying to pick my pride up off the ground. AWD DSM 1 you have a PM.

[turbohcar]

Well, believe it or not, I've got MORE bad news for you boys. Drove it to work yesterday and for some reason, the logger wasn't working. At first it wouldn't show any values, like it wasn't connecting. Then, it showed some values but they weren't correct. Like coolant temp would jump from -72*C to 59*C and it was 50*F outside. All the values were doing it, not just coolant temp. So, I checked all the connections, they were all correct. After that, I just shut it off, there was no point in it. Got to work, checked the coolant, it was a bit low. Filled it up, ran all my errands in town and parked it. After work I went to meet my friend that was going to follow me to Robs and I noticed it was a bit low before we left so, I filled it up again. As a precaution, I bought a 2 Liter of Dr. Pepper, drank some, and poured the rest out to be used as a water container just in case along with an empty Gatorade bottle. We headed out on I74 from the north side of Bloomington off of Veterans and headed towards Goodfield. Everything was fine until 6.5 miles from Goodfield. It started to overheat quite a bit. Not as bad as it had the first time but enough that I knew I had to pull over. I carefully (Don't try this one at home kids!) removed the radiator cap with a rag covering it to prevent any splash. I turned it to the first click and it let off a huge cloud of steam, second click blew the radiator cap into the ditch and spit water all over the front of the car. There was little to no water in the car. In fact, it took the entire 2.5 Liters I had in the car and that didn't even fill it up. At this point, I called Rob. He was EXTREMELY nice and drove out to pick us up in his pick'emup truck. We then drove the entire 20-30 miles back to my house to pick up the two wheel dolly. Then it was all the way back to the car, helping to disconnect the main driveshaft, hang it up with a bungee cord and push it onto the dolly and strap it down. Needless to say, he went wayyy out of his way to help even though his wife wasn't really happy about it. Tom and I followed Rob to the gas station at Goodfield so that I could fill up his truck and check the straps again. That's when we noticed the front bumper on the Talon. Evidently, the car sits low enough to scrape on the sides of the dolly's ramps. In fact, there was evidence of the three or four times we tried to push it up the ramps. So now there's three gashes in the bumper on either side.

So now my car's broke, the front bumper is torn off, my back hurts from laying on the asphalt next to semi-tractor trailers doing 65mph three feet from my head, I've got a deep cut on my right finger and I swallowed my left contact last night.

To try to make things better, Tom and I drove to Peoria to find a straight patch of asphalt and someone to drive next to us. We drove through campus, through Pekin, Creve Cour, all over Peoria and there was nothing to be found except for a Mustang GT that just liked the to hear the sound of his own exhaust. Not only that, but while in Pekin near the waterfront, he ran over someting. That something happened to be a small crowbar. When he went over it the bar kicked up against the side of the car on the drivers door. We got out and inspected it a bit only finding a small chip out of the top coat of paint, no big deal. Upon further inspection this morning, there's a 2inch long gash about a 1/4 inch deep just under his drivers side mirror. It wouldn't be as bad if he wasn't driving his (darn near mint condition) 86 Buick Regal T-Type, which is the same as a Grand National.

Last night sucked. I guess it can only get better.