Overheating

RWURTH2

MEMBER
2006 MAZDA 3
2WD
AUTOMATIC
180,000 MILES

On Friday I was driving and noticed the A/C went out. A couple minutes later I realized the temperature gauge wasn't reading anything. So I drove a couple miles home with the heat on and after I parked, saw white smoke/steam from left side of hood. I waited a bit and opened my hood and really didn't see anything broken or leaking. I'm wondering if I add coolant will I know if that was the issue or what might be the problem?

Sunday, August 22nd, 2021 AT 2:05 PM

1 Reply

DANNY L

MECHANIC
5,648 POSTS

Hello, I'm Danny.

This first thing I would suggest is to check the coolant level in both the radiator and overflow bottle. Use any brand of ethylene-glycol based coolant. You can buy a bottle of pre-mixed coolant as opposed to concentrate which you would have to dilute with water. When a car is running hot the are safety precautions like cut-off switches in the ac system to shut it off to not cause additional issues from engine overheating. After you check and possibly add coolant get back to us and we'll go from there.

Here is a tutorial on how cooling systems work:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/engine-cooling-system

Hope this helps and thanks for using 2CarPros.

Was this

answer

helpful?

Yes

No

Sunday, August 22nd, 2021 AT 11:39 PM