2008 Hummer H3 Alpha

My recent salvage purchase just got delivered today.

5.3 V8, Rear locker, 4:1 transfer case 

It has decent BFG tires all the way around and also has a brand new BFG full size spare. 

Cool score!

I'm looking forward to this one. 

Nice Score 👍

Keeper or Flip?

In reply to Indy - Guy :

Keeper 

I like these

Awesome. When I bought my first house the young lady realtor bought and H3 (not alpha) between when I started looking and closing. Not a good fit for her life, and was gone in under 6 months. 

Assessing the damage:

Pretty sure it was deer inflicted as I found tufts of fur in the grill. 
 

There is a smallish rust hole in the frame, at the drivers side shock mount. There seems to be enough good farm around it that it will be able to be patched. 
 

The deer smashed in the core support pushing it back until the top of the radiator hit the air intake tube and the radiator fan clutch pushed into the radiator fins. 
 

I stared by pulling the core support away so I could see what I was looking at before trying to start it up again. I added a couple of weights to the winch line after I took the picture in case it came unhooked. 
 

I was able to pull it out enough to get it lined back up with the hood latch and I pryed the fan back into place because it had gotten off kilter and was hitting a bolt head when I rotated it by hand. 
 

I checked the oil and coolant level and they looked fine, so I started it up. Ran fine, no weird noises, I let it idle for 15 mins, got in and the temperature gauge showed that the engine was up to temp, but the air from the heater was still blowing cold. I went to put it into gear, and the temp gauge shot up and an error message popped up saying check engine temp. 

Open to any thoughts, my first thought is either water pump got messed up when the radiator got pushed back into the fan, or maybe a thermostat issue?

Considering the damage and the aluminum heads, I wouldn't risk overheating and would replace the whole cooling system. Do you have anything to read the ECU datafeed to see temps in real time? The gauge is just a switch to show a problem, once it's past normal condition it's already been too hot.

Nice score, this looks pretty awesome!

I'd hook a pressure tester up to it and see if there are coolant leaks.

How do you check coolant level on these?  If it is not directly at the radiator, it is possible that coolant came out of the radiator but was still present in the overflow bottle for example.

Edit...  I see the cap is right on top of the radiator.

What are the chances that the waterpump is not pumping?

In reply to wvumtnbkr :

Yeah, I didn't really think through it. I just looked at the coolant overflow bottle and said yup it's got coolant let's start her up. 

Doing a coolant pressure test will be the next thing I will do, not sure why that didn't come to me before. 

In reply to bbbbRASS :

I was just going off the guage. That makes sense that it is just a switch.
 

I have HP tuners, I know there is a dash board on that but I don't know if it has coolant temp on it.

 After I do a coolant pressure test, I plan to take your advice and just go ahead and replace the cooling system items.