So what are the odds that I just seriously berked something up?

So earlier this evening I hopped in the RX7 to go pick up a pizza, and as I'm loafing along 3 miles up the road from my house doing about 45 in 5th gear, scan the gauges real quick and...berkeley! Coolant temp gauge is at 250!

I shut it down immediately and rolled into a small parking lot to assess the situation. It is indeed puking out the overflow bottle and the serpentive belt has vanished without a trace, quite obviously leading to the overheating situation. Time to call the tow truck.

Clearly I'll need to get to the bottom of why it tossed the belt in the first place, but frankly at the moment I'm more concerned about what damage I may have done to the motor. It was running fine at the point I shut it off and I don't think I went very far at all before I caught the issue. I just fired it up again (after fully cooling down) to maneuver it up the driveway and it's not showing any obvious signs of distress, but now I'm paranoid that I've warped the heads or nuked the headgaskets or something. To my recollection, I've never seriously overheated a car before.

So what say the hive? Should I be legitimately concerned here?

I suppose I should mention as well it's got an LS1 in it.

It'll probably be fine.  Modern engines are remarkably tolerant of thermal abuse.  It's not like the old days where engines were mostly designed by what would fit where, and the cylinder heads were screwed to the block's decks instead of deep down with nice looooong bolts.

Hell, I've cooked rotaries that hard and been fine.

Today I worked on a 1.4 turbo GM product where the engine had been overheating for a while, but now that the weather is warming up the lack of A/C means it needs to be addressed.  I drained a quart of coolant out of the whole engine.  It was fine after fixing the leaks and putting coolant in it.  (The A/C works, too!)

It should be fine.

250 shouldn't tickle an LS1. IIRC the secondary fans don't even come on until 230 in stock applications.

I am a little disappointed it's not a rotary, because I was going to make a head gasket joke.

Thanks guys, figured I was being paranoid but that puts my mind somewhat at ease.

You'll be fine. 

Seems like a good opportunity to drop the LSA supercharger on there.

ShawnG said:

Seems like a good opportunity to drop the LSA supercharger on there.

"We broke it, gotta add boost now"

"But it's fine just let it cool off..."

"I SAID BOOST!"

Keith Tanner said:

250 shouldn't tickle an LS1. IIRC the secondary fans don't even come on until 230 in stock applications.

I am a little disappointed it's not a rotary, because I was going to make a head gasket joke.

This. All of it lol.

Watch a few episodes of Roadkill, you’ll feel much better about 250 degrees.