Sp I'm on a road trip with my car so this is sorta freaking me out...

Yesterday I was driving on the highway and the coolant level light went off but went away after 2 minutes. It cam back maybe 20 minutes later but went away again. Mind you it's 34 deg celcius outside.

After that I could feel my car bogging at hard accelleration or WOT. Eventually the next time we stopped, the car had trouble idling and wanted to stall out. Even when I restarted the car, I had to give it gas to prevent it from dying out.

Finally, later on I came to a stop light and gave it gas in first to go but it went up to about 3k rpm and then died out, went into second and kept going down to zero and stalled.

It wouldn't start any more, just crank. Pushed it into a parking lot and opened the hood to let it cool down. The coolant level was fine too but I was reading that the sensor is pretty shitty. Either way we waited about 20 mins and added a bit of water to the coolant and she started up again.

Got to my destination from there on driving with windowa down and heat at max to vent the engine bay.

At no point did my engine temp needle move away from anything but normal.

Car is a 2004 GT with 64,000 kms on it. Moda are only a K&N intake.

I'm guessing it stalled because it was running for so long constantly at 4-6k RPM on the highway for so long and it just got too hot... Aby more advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

 

It very well could be a coolant seal. I would do a pressure test on the cooling system.

 

From what i see, you might need a compression test as well.

 

FYI its running fine today, took it around for about an hour and no prob

 

Your coolant reservoir is going out.
Not a sensor issue, it's the reservoir itself.
It'll work fine for awhile before the coolant light sticks.

 

What would cause a coolant reservoir to go out? I had mine replaced about 3 years (15k miles ago).

Munchy, I had the exact same thing happen to me again this year. Got a new engine, but declined to pay the $300 they wanted to replace the reservoir again. After I got it back with the new engine, I have yet to see the coolant light come on again. I would have the engine checked based on the other things your car is doing.

 

Mainly due to heat. Plastic+heat+time=fail, pressure lost.
It's gonna fail sooner or later, unless you switch to aftermarket aluminum one.
But to be honest, the oem one is very well designed, if you cut it open and look at the structure.
The only failure is that the oem is not made of aluminum...

 

UPDATE (for those who care):

Did a coolant flush.
Cooling system pressure is good.
Got an engine compression test today, also good.

Guess it was just way too damn hot.