I have a 99 Mercury Mountaineer 5.0L V8 that recently started overheating (or thats what the gauge is telling me). The "Check Gauge" light has come on, but turning the heat on seems to make the gauge read cooler.
The radiator is barely warm, but definitely not hot, and no coolant is boiling when it's reading hot. When it's warm, there does seem to be some gurgling around the heater valve - possibly the heater core.
To try to cure this problem, I have changed the coolant and thermostat
- but nothing helped.
To my knowledge I am not leaking any coolant.
When I changed the coolant, I left the radiator cap off to burp the air. When it heated up (and I presume the thermostat opened) coolant sprayed quite violently from the radiator top. I thought coolant level should drop when the stat opens??
Any recommendations of what to try next would be appreciated.