Thar she blows! 94' 3.0L cooling problems...

[Cat.diesel.93]

A little back story....
Bought the truck from a dude who didn't know the first thing about maintenance Did all the usual inspections; brake fluid dirty as hell, oil needed to be changed, but the coolant looked pretty clean. Overall, good enough to get me home. Did the test drive, everything seemed good, right? Right? Welllllll, about an hour into my 2.5 hour drive back, I noticed the coolant temp was creeping towards the hotter side of things Pulled over, let her cool down, de-pressurize, and popped the rad cap off again...only to find brown sludge dripping off the bottom of the cap Everyone knows what that is, I'm sure...so, limped her home, tore the heads off and replaced the gaskets. As I was digging into it, the further I went through the cooling system, the worse and worse it looked....until I got to the water pump. When I say this thing looked like it had see war, that's probably an understatement. What fins remained on the impeller were folded right over against the wheel, and the rest of the fins...gone. Idk where to, my guess is straight into the block. Didn't have the necessary tools or money to dig deeper, so I slapped pretty much a whole new cooling system on it and called it good. New pump, thermostat, heater core, hoses, radiator and cap. However, when I go and start this thing up, I have to put my fill funnel on the radiator and let it get up to temp before I drive anywhere. The reason being, as it gets up to temp, pressure builds until it back fills my funnel almost to full, then sucks it all back down. She's now good to drive at that point.

My question is, has anyone else experienced something like this before? Could pieces of the old water pump be causing this issue? And how impossible would it be to fish those little buggers out of the block if it were the culprit?

Thoughts?

 

[Terrys87]

I don't know the 3.0 but sure it same as most other motors. Remove thermostat and get a good seal with a water hose and flush thru the radiator hoses. You might have to work it from upper hose to lower hose and then vice versa to get them out. For no bigger than they are I would say they should come out. I would say the more the pressure the better. I got two trucks that had really nasty cooling systems. Same as you, I replaced everything and flushing my block this way really cleaned things up.

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

@Cat.diesel.93
From reading what you've wrote my opinion is that you have things in hand.
I would flush the system out like @Terrys87 said.
However I'm sure you're on top of it already.

 

[Cat.diesel.93]

I don't know the 3.0 but sure it same as most other motors. Remove thermostat and get a good seal with a water hose and flush thru the radiator hoses. You might have to work it from upper hose to lower hose and then vice versa to get them out. For no bigger than they are I would say they should come out. I would say the more the pressure the better. I got two trucks that had really nasty cooling systems. Same as you, I replaced everything and flushing my block this way really cleaned things up.

Yeah, I tried that when I went and replaced everything. Either something is really stuck in there (like an ungodly amount of head gasket stop leak/metal pieces,) or I just didn't have enough pressure to flush the crap out. Might as well just save up for a new block and go from there

 

[ShhhhhDougsHere]

Well dang that sucks. Sorry to hear that.
At this point the best I can do is wish you luck.

So good luck brother.