Bear with me here as this is my first post in a forum and I am still new to the whole vehicle maintainance.
I have a 94 firebird formula with the LT1, and I have been losing coolant out of the system for a while but couldn't find where it was going, until the leak became bad enough to spot. It was coming from the back of the block. I took it in to a maintaince shop since I don't have the tools and they told me it was the crossover pipe that was bad. They replaced it. Upon returning the car home (it is currently at the parents house since I'm in the military), radiator fluid was spewing from the radiator cap, not the resevoir. When I was able to drive it, the temperature gauge never got above 180 (I think I have a 160 degree thermostat), and my car has never ran that cold ever. When I checked the two coolant tubes leading into the water pump, I was able to remove both of the little screws with no coolant coming out (both with engine on and off). I may not know much, but I do believe that coolant tubes are supposed to have fluid in them. Now I am not sure what is going on. It could be that fixing the leak allowed the car to run at a colder temp than what it has run previously, or that the fluid is now not circulating through the engine block which is real bad. I do not know where the engine temp sensor is, so I don't know if I am even getting the right temp reading for the system.
Does anyone have any ideas? Is there some way that I can check the coolant system to see if it is running through the block correctly?

 

Sounds like the shop didn't bleed the system properly.

Check www.shbox.com for the proper bleeding procedures. It's pretty simple, so being that you are admittedly new to the vehicle it's something you should be able to tackle.

 

Wouldn't hurt to replace the rad cap while you're at it to cover everything. Sometimes they just go an blow coolant everywhere. But hopefully you just have air in the system. Easy to bleed once you do it once and get use to it.

 

Thanks for the help guys, I'll give that a shot. Looking around, I believe I may have posted this in the wrong thread. I'll repost this in the maintainance side as well. Once again, thanks for the help.

 

Sounds like you have air trapped in the cooling system creating pockets of air/hot spots within the cooling system. Bleed out the air with the bleeder screw (http://shbox.com/1/bleeders.jpg), use caution not to get the coolant to fall down possibly onto your optispark. As far as coolant boiling over and out of your radiator cap (not the overflow) could possibly indicate that your cap may be bad (id just go ahead and replace it, get the 18psi rated one from local automotive supply). If that is the case your cooling system will not be able to reach 18psi and the boiling point of the coolant will be lower than it should be. If water can get out, air can get in. Air does exist inside the cooling system, and when the system presurizes it is purged when the engine reaches operating temperature and those hoses pressurize. If you have a constant feed of air into the cooling system it will never be purged, and you will constantly have your cooling system fail and boil over. I'd check the fans while youre down there. To address another point question you had in regards to knowing weather or not you were getting coolant to the engine block...well if your temp gauge works properly you will know immediately because it will be pegged very fast and you and risking doing serious damage to your engine. I hope you figure it out