In this article, we will tell you what to do when your car overheats. But before that let’s know some tips to help us avoid your car from overheating.
How to Prevent your Car from Overheating
When your car overheats often, there are things you can do to prevent your car from overheating. Below are the tips.
- Park your car in a shade
- Use a shade for your car window
- Tint your window to reduce Sun reflection
- Leave the windows of your car slightly open
- Turn on the floor air vents
- Monitor the temperature gauge
- Add engine coolant
- Let a mechanic flush your radiator
- You can also consider replacing your car battery.
How to know your car is overheating
If you are unable to prevent your car from overheating, yet you can still save it from damaging the engine without repairs. Before you can do that you need to know when your engine is overheating.
- Steam: This can be in a form of smoke coming beneath the car, this shows that the car is overheated.
- An Engine Temperature gauge that turns red or moves to “H”. There are different gauge symbols so check the owner’s manual.
- A strange and awful smell coming from the car’s engine area. For instance, when a coolant leaks it smells sweet but a leaking oil smells burnt.
What to do when your car engine overheats.
1. Don’t be frightened
it’s okay if your engine is not cool, but you have to be. Avoid veering in traffics or when getting off the road hitting the breaks.
2. Stop driving
when your car engine is overheating but you are still driving, you tend to worst the situation staying on the road. It’s possible you get to your destination before it shut down, but you can cause damage pushing the engine too far.
3. Do not immediately open the hood
Once you packed the car, you wait for the car engine to cool off before opening the hood. opening the hood immediately can place you in the danger of burns or injuries from splashed steam. You need to be patient and wait until the car engine temperature drops.
4. Off the AC
You turn off the AC (Air Conditioner) to minimize the engine stress. This will reduce the heat from the engine and stops it from overheating before you get to a better location. this will discomfort you and you get hot oo but you need to bare it compared to having a
serious engine problem.
5. Find a safe place to park
park the car at a safe place and shut the car off. Then allow the car engine temperature to drop for about 15 minutes. Monitor the temperature gauge, as it tends to move to the normal range while the temperature of the car engine drops.
6. If you have a coolant check and add it
if the level of the coolant is low, quickly add some so to reduce the car engine from overheating till you get the situation resolved. Be careful, this step won’t be helpful if the hose of your coolant is blocked or the radiator fan or water pump is broken. Then you call for help.
7. Never Open the coolant hose while the car is still hot to prevent injuries. As it tends to splash hot steam on you if not cooled off.
8. Don’t let the situation get serious
When you start experiencing an overheating engine, it cant be resolved on its own even after it looks OK applying a little coolant. you need to get it to a mechanic else it will get worst.
9. Restart the engine
If the car hasn’t been towed, you carefully restart the car engine and move to a mechanic shop. meanwhile, you monitor the temperature gauge as you drive. if it rises, you park and wait for it to drop.
