2005 Sebring Covertible Overheating
 

New radiator and lower hose and thermostat. Tried burping buy it never bleeds off all the air. Sitting parked the temp needle sits a half way. In idle for over 30 minutes. As soon as you drive it a half a mile the temperature starts climbing. Pull over, shut the car off, leave the fan runming on full heat, loosen the reservoir cap to let some steam out, let it sit a few minutes and the temp drops. Drive it a mile and repeat. Head gasket? Water pump?

Might be air in the system. DON"T use the bleed screw. If you have used it, you may have stripped the seat into which the bleed screw fits. The seat is embedded in plastic, but not very well. Turning the bleed screw can wind up turning the seat and stripping out the connection between the plastic casing and the metal seat. Replacement of the part, which is called the coolant outlet manifold is the only way to fix it. There is plenty of information here on the forum about that.
To bleed the air out, remove the topmost hose there while filling.
There are many other possible causes of overheating that you should explore. Radiator cap, clogged radiator internally or externally, improper coolant, collapsed hose, low coolant, bad thermostat, to name some.
Rule out all the cheap things first.
There are other tests for head gasket failure, which is a very expensive repair, so don't assume that unlikely event is the source of your problems until you absolutely have to.
Likewise, water pump. When that fails, it tends to result in coolant in the oil pan. Again, that's a very expensive repair that requires removal of everything on the front of the engine including the timing chains, so don't jump to any conclusions there either.

Brand new radiator. Tried everything.

Try running the car without the radiator cap on and see if the coolant circulates after the thermostat opens. The water pump has a plastic impeller and if the shaft cracks or separates it won't spin fast enough for the coolant to pump. I've heard of that happening. If the coolant shoots out then it's probably a bad head gasket but I doubt it.

John

The only cap is on tge resevoir. There is no radiator cap. Unless I'm misunderstanding. It was explained to me that i have compression back into the cooling system, thus head gasket?

That's what I meant. The pressure cap on the overflow bottle serves the same purpose. You should see coolant circulate in and out of the reservoir if the water pump is working. If you have compression gasses in the coolant you will see the coolant shoot out the overflow with the cap off. That's easy to see. As dcotter said you need to bleed the air from the bleeder valve since it's the highest point but you risk breaking the housing. You can't bleed all the air out from the reservoir. It's too low. Where did you bleed the system from. It could be as simple as air in the system.

John

I know this is a old post but did you ever solve the problem ?