It sounds like your loosing coolant somwhere. I dont see the connection between a bad battery and loosing coolant. After you replaced the battery are you still loosing coolant?

 

Sounds a bit like a bad serpentine belt. Though that wouldn't cause loss of coolant. Just bad battery and overheating.

 

The bad battery should have nothing to do with the loss of coolant. If the two problems are related, it could be a water pump issue. Is there any signs of coolant leaking from the pump area? If it was leaking coolant your pump is shot, which could lead to the dead battery. Your altenator should be charging your battery everytime you drive, however if the water pump is going out the pulley could become hard to turn, glazing/wrecking your serpentine belt. This could affect the belts ability to turn the altenator. I would start which checking the overall condition of your belt and water pump.

Aaron

 

Did your power steering fail? (of course I mean before your battery died)

 

So I bought a new battery, the old one was bad. the car drives fine, however after a while it started to overheat again. I had to put the heat on hi to cool it down and drive back home. Just before I reached home, I got the alert "fill coolant". After parking the car and open the hood I saw a lot of coolant spilled all over the battery and the hood cover. The belt look fine but there was a squeaky noise when I was driving back. No, power staring did not fail before before turning it off.
Does anyone think this might be a thermostat issue? Because I know I have a bad thermostat that has been on and off, dropping to cold with constant CEL.

 

no you have a leak somewhere. You have to check every external place coolant can be. Hoses, Coolantbypass valve, Radiator, Waterpump, Coolant Lines, Everything. You can see where its coming from when your engine overheats?

 

Replace your thermostat first. Cheap and easy to do. If your car is getting too hot (stuck shut thermostat) driving the car will boil your coolant right out of the reservoir. I know this because mine failed while I was in Europe. Someone drove the car about 100 miles with no coolant :roll: Before this, I was getting alerts about the thermostat getting stuck open (engine temp needle dropping to 7 o'clock) but I had to leave the country before I could fix it.

 

If your car is getting too hot (stuck shut thermostat) driving the car will boil your coolant right out of the reservoir.

Also, if your system is plugged,even partially, the same boiling over will happen. When is the last time the coolant was drained and the system was flushed?