Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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Engine overheating - summer problem?
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yes, hot hoses will be a little soft. that's why there are big-pitch springs inside them, to keep them from going flat on you if they get hot.
it's not impossible there could still be a thermostat that won't open, or was put in backwards, and the way to insure you don't have that issue is to take it out and put the system back together without it. the engine won't hit its warmup points correctly and will be off the computer program, but what the hell, it probably won't die from it, just waste gas and maybe be logy at worst while testing.
if the engine still gets hot and the radiator does also, the water pump is working. if the radiator gets sorta hot, it's probably almost plugged, and needs to be rodded or replaced. if you can't get it out of the normal range, you found the problem. if the stat tests OK, it might be the water pump, not sure what a good functional pressure-type test of one is, I've done my few replacements when the bearing starts to leak.
I should probably mention that if there is any orange coolant in there, you have no fun coming. the orange Dex-Cool stuff does NOT mix with anything else, and if somebody tries, you get orange cement-like crud plugging things up in the cooling spaces. somebody who has dealt with it successfully would have to try and chemically flush the stuff out to save the engine. I found that evil in my sister's system, and had to replace the overflow hose, but by some miracle the radiator was not badly munged up, and a dealer flush cleared it up. it also doesn't like air, same result.
AND thanks for the info on what really happens when orange meets green or yellow. I have asked several car people about it, and have never heard a definitive word until now. Why did GM get into something that potentially problematic?
amazing there are radiators that have enough metal to be roddded out any more, most of them are so thin that a few years of aluminum/salt corrosion on roads like Minnesota's will rot through. the old days of brass radiator cores that could be reamed free of rust and verdigris and silver-soldered or brazed where the push rod broke through are gone, folks.
of course, it all ends up as cost at some point, and since cars are so beastly expensive compared to the simple runabouts when we were kids, the non-core parts get cheaped out to a 3-year design life or thereabouts.
on the other hand, it could be that all that was hosed up was the radiator and some fancy plastic. but my sister bought a "cheap cheat job", as diagnosed by the dealer who sold it, because it had not been adequately qualified before it went on the lot. first road blow it hit, the thing would have disintegrated. took it back for a look-see because the hood never closed right, and the body shop guys put a boot on the car and called the sales manager saying this was a total, and they needed to do a make-good.