well im not too shure where it all started but the long and short of it is I had a leak in my cooling system (the o-ring on the egr cooler tube) and the truck got hot. As a side of the road fix it ended up with 2 bottles of rad stop leak in it (the powder type), I have since flushed the cooling system twice with the aluminum safe chemical and replaced the coolant with the correct 50/50 mix of long life coolant and the problem seems to be the coolant is not circulating through the system. Even after the truck is up to full operating temp the lower rad hose is cold. I removed the thermostats and tested them and they checked out fine, and the temp on the gauge is 100 now instead of 85 where it worked before. So does any one have any thoughts

I for one would never put stop leak in my truck! I also wounder if the radiator is pluged you may want to flush it out with a hose.

Sounds like you have air in the system.

well stop leak has saved lots of guys lots of times and like i said in the first post i have flushed out the whole cooling system twice with the correct cleaning agent . the air in the system is a thought i had also but when you do the system flush you install a flush tee in the heater core hose and hook the garden hose to it and use it to pressurise the system i thought that would chase any air out.

Is it using coolant?

Upper hose hard after running?

Upper hose still hard ( if it is at all ) after sitting overnight?

ya the upper hose stays hard for some time after runing

Ouch...! One of the sure signs of a blown headgasket (sorry dood) :(

No no, how long does the hose stay hard? Do you shut it down after you come home from work at night and then in the morning its still hard? Thats the test. Check your overflow bottle as well. Sometimes you'll see oil in it when the headgaskets go.

When you flushed it did you have a good flow out of it? Stop leak can do some nasty stuff to your motor/rad, also does it have heat? check your heater core to make sure that is not pluged

well there is no oil in the water or water in the oil it is not using any coolant and the heater makes lots of heat, but the lower rad hose is cold even at normal opp tempurature i have not driven it yet today so before i start it i will check the rad hse should it be hard or soft should there still be pressure in the system ?

no there should not be pressure on the system still and if the hose is hard then id be pointing to a blown head gasket

well the truck sat for 10 hrs and there was still pressure in the system so if this is a blowen head gasket what is a good way to diagnose this for shure

I would bet you got head gasket problems I checked mine this am to see how hard it was and my top hose was soft. so if yours is staying pressurized I bet thats whats going on.

Since you say the bottom hose is always cool even when warmed up, is you engine overheating? the radiator may be plugged internally and the coolant is flowing down through the tubes so slowly its cooling it down farther then it needs too. IIRC from CAT training the bottom hose should be something like 15 to 20 deg cooler then the top hose coming out of the motor if its way cooler the coolant is circulating too slowly through the rad. but it still doesn't explain why the pressure is staying built up in the system.....you may have a couple problems going on here. who knows maybe the stop leak in there plugged the rad tubes up internally. just a thought.