Is Your Car Overheating? Here’s Why…

When the summer temperatures hit in Dubai, it can feel like everything is too hot to handle. But, no matter how many degrees your temperature gauge reads, it’s not normal for your car to be overheating. Every car has been built to manage heat control. If yours starts to overheat, that means that your engine isn’t able to cool itself effectively. This causes temperatures to rise inside the vehicle, triggering alert signs on your dashboard and smoke to billow from under the hood — not good! What’s more, if unresolved, an overheated car can suffer cracked pistons and warped cylinders. Put simply: if your car overheats too much, that could be the end of it! So every driver should be clued up as to why a car may start overheating in the first place...

6 reasons why cars overheat

There’s not enough coolant to control the temperature Engine coolant is a liquid that absorbs heat from your engine. As you can imagine, if the amount of coolant in your engine drops too low — due to an internal leak or broken radiator cap, etc. — then heat isn’t absorbed, causing temperatures to rise. Your thermostat is stuck closed Your car’s thermostat helps regulate the engine temperature. If the thermostat is stuck closed, coolant can’t flow through. The water pump isn’t doing its job properly Another coolant related issue: if your car’s water pump isn’t circulating engine coolant, to counteract normal heat production in the engine, then the temperature will start to rise very fast indeed.

Something’s causing a blockage in the radiator

The radiator plays a vital role in temperature management in your engine, if there’s something clogging the radiator pipes, then heat can’t disperse into the air as it should.

Your head gasket has blown

Without getting too technical, every car engine has a head gasket to seal the cylinder head of the engine to the engine block. Whilst you don’t need to worry too much about what a head gasket is supposed to do, it is a cause for concern if your head gasket blows. A blown gasket can be the cause or the result of a car overheating.

A plugged or clogged up heater core

Whilst it may not feel like it in the height of summer, even cars in the UAE need a heat exchanger to keep passengers warm on chillier days.  The heat exchanger works a bit like a heating system, pumping warm air out of your car’s air vents. But, if the heater core plugs — becomes clogged or blocked with rust, for example — then the whole system packs up. Coolant can’t flow through and, before you know it, the dashboard is alight with errors and you’re detouring via a mechanics.

So what do you do if your car is overheating?

An overheated car can be very pricey to fix.  In fact, the repair bills to fix an overheating car are amongst the highest you’d ever have to pay as a driver. And, if symptoms of car overheating are ignored, you could very easily damage your vehicle beyond repair. The bottom line is: always seek a professional opinion if your hood feels hot, the temperature light keeps flashing, or your engine drops in power. Try to give the engine time to cool down, and don’t drive anywhere if there’s smoke — get the mechanic to come to you. Even better, how about you stop worrying about car maintenance all together? By joining Invygo you get a choice of makes and models — which you can swap every month, if you want to. There’s no hidden fees; one monthly payment covers insurance, routine maintenance and roadside assistance. So if your car unexpectedly overheats, the worst thing that’ll happen is we send you home in a different — perhaps better! — set of wheels. No worries about mechanics bills, no stress over burst gaskets. Just you and the open road, Invygo makes it that easy!