No heat..Water pump related?

[target1027]

Hey all-
I have a 93 Camry SE V6. The car overheated when my girl was driving it due to a blown radiator. Unfortunatly, I'm afraid that maybe she drove a it bit into the "red zone" and I wanted some advice before I bother dumpin too much into it. When I filled the block and radiator and ran it, I was getting no heat in the cab (although the gauge indicated normal oper. temp) I changed the thermosat with an OE (figuring the old one was smoked from the overheat) and still no heat.

Is it possible that the water pump is gone too from the overheat as well ?(although it shows no external signs of leakage) Could somrthing have blocked the coolant passages from the overheat? BTW, I have only run the car with no radiator cap on because the radiator is leakin like a sieve. Could this be connected? I did try a searching the forum before posting, but no luck....TY in advance!!

[ShawnM]

Its hard to get the air bled out of the cooling system when you dont have the proper coolant flow due to a bad leak somewhere. It sounds like you just have air trapped in the heater core. I would try replacing the radiator first. Ive never seen a waterpump go bad because the engine overheated. I have seen headgaskets go bad due to overheating though, which could also cause a lack of heat. Just depends on how bad she overheated it. But if the headgasket is bad you should see it shooting out lots of coolant once the thermostat opens. At any rate I would put a radiator in it first.