I was carshopping with a friend, we were looking at a 05 cad. northstar, we were looking the engine over and I noticed what appeared to be coolant/water overspray on the insulation of the hood. I made a commet about that it appeared the car had been run hot at some point. My friend stated, that cabilliac had a safety feature that would shut the engine down in case of lost water/coolant before it reached the danger level, something about 240F. Anyone out there know about this, or have some info related it. Thanks.
According to Wikipedia (Google “Northstar Engine Series Wiki”) the Northstar engine has a “limp home” loss of coolant feature. The 240F number was not mentioned.
Even with failsafe cooling and engine shutdown features, it is still possible to damage an engine by overheating. You should perhaps ignore some of your friend’s advice. Unless you can do the repairs yourself and the price is very good, you should continue to skip the cars with apparent problems. It would be worth it to have whatever you do pick professionally inspected/tested to look for non-apparent problems before signing for it.
The Cadillac Northstar can be overheated like any other engine. They do not shut down at 240 degrees. The only thing unique to Northstars is that when you overheat the engine, it will shut down injectors on individual cylinders to try and cool them so you can make it home/ repair shop, but it will still be overheating which on a Northstar is very expensive when compared to other vehicles.
Thanks for the feedback. I was not aware of any such features on cads. or any other auto. I really don’t think he knew about the feature, my guess is he had heard about it someplace.