New Overheating Problem

[weluvmitchy]

Hey everyone,

My 2011 V6, over the past two days, has started overheating and giving me the "Idle Engine" message, specifically when I slow down into city streets after long stretches of freeway driving. After reading over other threads, I noticed various things like a thermostat, water pump, and head gasket, but I figured that because it has been running so smooth up and down the freeway with absolutely 0 issues that it wasn't necessarily anything major like that. I also read about the fan not turning on, but when I shut the car off after these overheating spurts, the fan audibly runs for ~5 mins, so it doesn't seem to be an issue with the fan not turning on either.

Anyone have any guidance?

Thanks in advance

[1JEWLDSSRS]

Your Camaro should have 2 fans, mine does. They are designed to run at different speeds depending on what the coolant temps are seeing, I beleive one of them runs at the low speed, and the second one will kick on at high speed when the temps require it to do so. I would suggest you check them while the car is idleing and up to temp to see how and what they are doing. You might have one fan motor that isn't working, and just the low speed is. That's what happened with mine, so we replaced both fan motors on mine to make sure all was good. You might want to check your fan relays too as well.. Good luck.

[weluvmitchy]

Neither fan is kicking on after checking. In checking things out, we noticed that the radiator hose is soft and really not very hot. We also noticed after taking the radiator cap off that it doesn't seem like water is circulating. Could the root of all this be a faulty thermostat?

[gtstorey]

Yes sounds like thermostat. But I have seen impeller come of inside water pump so doesn’t mean thermostat 100%.