warning light. over heating!!!
 

ok so im new to this whole supra thing. I bought a 86 non turbo a few days ago. i thought it looked like a pretty cool car. after I drove it i wanted it even more. i reasearched the car and everything checked out ok. I bought it and was headed home. after a while of driving I noticed the raideator light had come on. not sure when it came on but it was on. my temp was fine and stayed fine for a long time. after quite a while longer my temp had gone sky high. I pulled over and ran water over the raideator. I got it home let it cool but the light wont go off. it hasnt over heated again but i havent been doing any highway driving like i had been on the way home. i bought a new raideator cap but...no sucess. any ideas on what i should do??

Is it the coolant light to the left of the temp gauge? If so raise the front end on jack stands, take the radiator cap off ,top off the radiator and start the car. Once it gets up to temperature the level will drop, top it off. You probably have air in the system. The warning light is a low coolant light. Check your resevoir.

Check all your hoses for small leaks. Not just the two big radiator hoses. Overheating a 7m is really really bad.

ok I'll give it a shot. by the way what do you mean by 7m?

thats the engine, 7m-ge in yours and my case. 7m-gte in the case of people with turbos.

Also check
 

The back of the block area is an area of concern. There is piping that runs along the side of the block that deals with the heater hose and the hoses that run to the ISC valve and throttle body.. Check the back where the heater hose connection connects to this piping and the other side there should be a plug. This plug on my car came off a couple of weeks ago and I lost all my water in a matter of seconds. The reason the piping in the back has a plug on one side and heater hose on the other is for LHD and RHD, the heater hose is swapped.

your goose is cooked
that light means that the car drank all the water it had and was looking for more . if your car is tapping into the water reservoir bottle "up front near the left headlight" it's not an air bubble .

it could have been an air bubble if you just did work on the coolant system but i doubt it .

keep pouring in plenty of coolant and start researching BHG

if you don't see water peeing out somewhere you got serious issues cuz that means the engine is using the water

that is true, if you arent leaking anywhere you in for some trouble, but first look hard for leaks. i was leaking from my lower radiator hose but it was so hard to find cus it would take weeks for the bottle to lose enough coolant for the light to come on

i got a question, it may be a little off topic but i need to know, what is the container near the left headlight on an 88 supra? when my engine overheated and i opened the hood the water in there was boiling hot, i went through 2 engines before i went to a better mechanic and got it fixed. but was is that container?

that plastic bucket is the overflow bucket for your radiator. when your coolant gets hot enough itll get pushed in there instead of like busting a hose or something. you also put coolant in there and if your radiator needs more itll take it from the bucket.

o so its ok to put water and coolant mixed in there?

absolutley. thats what its made for

ok thanks for the help man preciate it

also one thing we are not telling him is that there is a posibility that the coolant is also being lost during driving. as in my case ,I would only loose coolant during highway speeds due to a small leak on the headgasket, exaust gasses would leak into the coolant chamber and push out the coolant through the reservoir since radiator pressure slowly creeped up and went past the pre-determined rad-cap pressure. about two weeks later came some power loss and a more frequent refilling of the radiator....

this is known as the BHG

thats correct DD..

ok thanks everybody. I found a blown hose. wasnt very fun but i got it fixed. the problem now is that I filled everything up but the light wont go off. do i need to reset something or what?

you didn't fill up the bottle up front, thats what makes the light go on

it's outside the engine bay near the front left headlight


btw , what do you think made the hose blow ?


now is when you want to make sure you do not have any air pockets/air bubbles and it's completely topped off .

you need to watch it closely
the reserve bottle and the radiator watch for ANY water usage

and listen for a rushing water sound in the dash when you start up in the morning

my check engine light wont go off and my brake light wont go off.. whats with that? the check brake lights light is on above the check engine light, sometimes it goes off, do i need to fill that container next to the left headlight to turn off the check engine light?

you need to do a diagnostic of the error codes your engine is throwing .

you jump connections on the diag box in the engine bay
and the engine light blinks a morse code type blink

He didnt know coolant could go into the coolant recovery reservoir, I doubt he is going to be able to check his codes.

I flushed and changed my coolant not too long ago, and after I filled everything up (including the overflow bottle) my "birdcage" light was still on. It turns out that when I was shooting a high pressure stream of water in the bottle to clean out all the goopies, I cause the float on the sensor to get stuck. I took the bottle back out, dumped it out and turned the whole thing over and the float didnt move. I gently reached inside with a screwdriver and free'd it up. That cured that issue.

If your check brake light warning is coming on and going off it sounds to me like you may have a bad connection somewhere. I have seen bulbs get all corroded and make poor contact in their sockets lots of times. I would start there. Take each of the bulbs out, clean them (one of those green kitchen scrubbers works great for this) and put them back in.

As for your check engine light being on, it means that your computer has senced something is wrong or was wrong in at least one area of operation of the engine/trans. It could be simple or it could be real trouble. you wont knonw until you "retrieve" the code from the memory.

Go to this page to understand more about checking your codes: http://www.toyota-supra.info/forums/...read.php?t=323

there might also be another culprit for the brake light. make sure there is enough fluid in your brake master cylinder.

"As for your check engine light being on, it means that your computer has senced something is wrong or was wrong in at least one area of operation of the engine/trans."

There are no check engine codes for 87-92 supra that refer to the automatic trans. There is a separate computer for ECT (electronic controled trans) codes that are accessible through the Super Monitor or flashing it out the O/D off light.

:whateva:

I was giving a generic "check engine light" responce...
but thanks for clarifying

lol thanks for the help guys, but how do i take out brake lights? can you gimme step by step instructions or a link? thanks

the actual lights themselves? in your trunk there are two access panels right behind the lights. go in through there

^^ what he said...once you get behind those panels you will find a white plastic panel that holds all the lights. You unplug that and pop it out of the tail light housing to get at your bulbs.

thx i'll do it this weekend and let you guys know.