clean the lines well with some break cleaner or throttle body cleaner, that should take the oil off and should dry off pretty fast for you to see where in fact the leak is coming from. If it leaks form your in/out lines, you may have damaged the seal on the tip of the lines. If it leaks from the threaded area, I would return the radiator and have it exchanged for a new one. You paid for it not to leak, if it leaks from the threads, what else was missed in q/a (i ask).

 

I just replaced mine, but acting like the thermostat is not opening up, so it starts to overheat pretty quickly. I put one gallon of antifreeze in (what the radiator holds) and filled the overflow. I got the 'engine hot' dings in less than a mile, and never got any heat from the vents with heat on high.

Any suggestions?

 

i had no trouble but ive heard this b4.
when its cool can you add any direct to to rad at the cap?
i dont know what else.

 

Taking what you said literally, antifreeze by itself is not an efficient coolant, you need 50% water, distilled water preferred.

BTW, the radiator and the hoses holds TWO gallons, so you are big time low.

 

The antifreeze I got was already 50/50 mixed.

It is fixed now, but I believe the problem was that I didn't back fill the engine with coolant, just filled the radiator. I was expecting that when it got up to temperature it would kick open the thermostat and start cycling the coolant to where I could add the remaining gallon. I'm guessing with no fluid in the block, and no fluid around the thermostat, the temp-sensing mechanism in the thermostat couldn't operate correctly.