In follow up to my last post about the NAV radio/CD, I sent it in to a guy who does service on ebay. GREAT GUY. If you have an issue with your head unit - he's the man. He got it working again for me.
The light on the shifter still blinks all the time, but tranny is smooth, so I haven't dug into it.
I've been trying to fix an overheat problem for months now though and could use advice! It was overheating so I replaced the thermostat - which is a huge PITA because of where they put it. (if you ever have to do it, you may want to remove the whole housing and you can get at it through the wheel well.) ANYWAY, the Avi ran fine for a couple months and then overheated again on my wife. I drove it for a couple days- no problems and then it started overheating on me constantly.
I did the combustion gasses in the coolant test and that was cl3ean, so I think the head gasket is ok. Thermostat is new. I thought it could just be stubborn trapped air. so I ended up buying an Airlift II tool to refill the coolant. I pulled a vacuum with the airlift and it wouldn't hold at all. So, I borrowed the pressure tester from Oreilly's and found I had a crack in the top plastic of the radiator. UGH.
So I bought a Spectra radiator and did the radiator swap. (The radiator is supposed to slide up out of side tracks, but I still don't know how. It's too wide. I had to unscrew one of the tracks and get the radiator out at an angle.) I then pulled a vacuum and it held, so I filled it with the Airlift tool. I still had problems after that, so I drained the coolant and filled it again with the airlift tool.
Right now when I start it, within a couple minutes, the level of coolant in the degas bottle starts going up and it overflows before the thermostat even gets hot enough to open. (I checked with an infrared thermometer.) It'll still overheat, but it usually overflows first.
I am out of ideas!! New thermostat, new radiator, new coolant, filled with Airlift to prevent trapped air.... ?????? Any ideas on where I should go next?