Coolant issues

[SovereignAxe]

Ok, here's the deal. Every time the car is cold, and I drive away from where I am, I hear a rushing/gargling sound coming from the engine bay. I just had an oil analysis done and there was no coolant/water detected. There's no dripping and I've been keeping an eye on the temp gauge and I've never seen it shoot up. On top of that, I've checked the radiator three times since this started and it's always been full.

So, I have little reason to suspect that there's a leak. However, I haven't had a trip in the last few weeks that has lasted more than 20 minutes, and it has stayed consistently cold this whole time (fluctuating between the teens and the 50s). The engine has reached operating temps almost every trip I take, but I'm wondering if these short trips have caused my thermostat to stay closed for so long, that by the time the coolant gets hot enough to open it, there's not enough time to force out what has to be some sort of air bubble in the engine block.

Does this sound plausible to anyone? Should I just take a thirty minute drive to the next city and do some spirited driving to shake the bubble loose into the radiator?

[KevinWelker]

yeah, your theory sounds plausible. Burp the system and see if that helps. Park on an incline with the front end as high as you can get it, open the radiator cap and just let it idle. A search here and on Google can give you more in depth details if you need them.

[Oversteer]

I do not think a spirited drive will remove the bubble from the closed system. Instead you should 'burp' the system. For fear of getting the exact procedure wrong, I am going to defer to letting you look up the procedure for your subbie on google at this point. The rushing/gargling is probably an air bubble in the heater core, so make sure to run the heater while burping the system.

[MilesFox]

If in doubt, change the thermostat. But this compounds your matter, as you would have to burp the system anyway, and only when you understand the burping technique.

Do some searches on the subject. There are credible articles out there on the google

[SovereignAxe]

I actually parked it on an incline today for a couple hours before I made this thread and still nothing. I'll try idling for a while with the cap off (or whatever he burping technique is) and see what happens.