Car keeps overheating???

Ask technical questions or post on problems/issues related to the Kizashi under this topic. Symptoms and pictures of your problem are a good idea.
NOTE: Any car related technical question can be posted here.
old tech
Posts: 705
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:51 pm
Location: n/w pennsysvania

I suspect your overheating problem to be at the head/head gasket area. This can be confirmed with a hydrocarbon test. The head gasket replacement can certainly be done in the vehicle but the room on the timing chain area is limited but enough. I’ve done a couple of these and both of them had warped heads caused by an overheat situation. The head must be checked with a straight edge and shaved flat and also the block should be checked as well but probably fine. This job should only take about 10 hours to do or at least that’s what I charged. I would only use the original Suzuki head gasket although that’s all that’s probably available anyway. The water trickling noise you hear is from the heater core being pretty much full of air /compression and water running through it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Typhoon1944
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Oct 14, 2014 9:27 am

old tech wrote: Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:26 pm I suspect your overheating problem to be at the head/head gasket area. This can be confirmed with a hydrocarbon test. The head gasket replacement can certainly be done in the vehicle but the room on the timing chain area is limited but enough. I’ve done a couple of these and both of them had warped heads caused by an overheat situation. The head must be checked with a straight edge and shaved flat and also the block should be checked as well but probably fine. This job should only take about 10 hours to do or at least that’s what I charged. I would only use the original Suzuki head gasket although that’s all that’s probably available anyway. The water trickling noise you hear is from the heater core being pretty much full of air /compression and water running through it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks for the reply old tech. After they had replaced the thermostat one person told me it was definitely the head gasket then he told me that they had carried out a pressure test which it passed so it WASN'T the head gasket (I don't know if this the test you mention) and then someone else said that information was incorrect and they didn't know why he would have told me that and it WAS the head gasket! I suspect my dealer is overpricing how much it will cost and how many hours work is required as they simply don't want to do it. It is a very rare vehicle over here in the UK. There was only 500 imported around 2011/12 as a test to see how the UK market would respond to a compact sports saloon. Although all 500 were sold pretty quickly, which suggests there was a market, Suzuki in their wisdom decided to discontinue it. Consequently many Suzuki dealerships have never even seen one. Unfortunately, I'm very much in a Catch 22 situation in that the dealer won't continue with the investigation until I authorise the work required but, as I don't have the kind of money they're talking about available, I'm unable to authorise it until I know 100% that it's a warranty failure and the extended warranty company will pay for it. I'm just going to offload it for scrap as the enjoyment has gone out of owning and driving it and, after all the previous work that I have had to get done over the past 18 months, I'd be forever thinking "what's next?".
old tech
Posts: 705
Joined: Mon Apr 23, 2018 1:51 pm
Location: n/w pennsysvania

The overheating problem I’m going to say is definitely warpage in the cylinder head caused by an overheat situation at some point. It may have been in the past and maybe not while you owned it. The common failure leading up to this is usually the drive belt came off caused by a tensioner pulley it’s no longer running straight. If you search. “cheap fix belt tensioner “ in the history here you’ll find I explain this and how to check for it. But anyway I would call your warranty company and ask them if a cylinder head surface deviation what is the cause of an overheat situation with that be covered and go from there. The cylinder heads aren’t as rare as you would think being that the 2.4 was used in the Vitara also and, I haven’t done this yet but I think you can actually put the 2.0 Sx4 head on it if needed. The whole 2.0 engine could easily replace the kizashi power plant is another option . Not a good one because of the loss of displacement but it is plug and play and probably easy to find. Dumping it for scrap price sounds like the worst thing you could do on a rare car of only 500 . Someone else is looking for parts you have. This will be a collector’s car one day.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Post Reply