Cooling Problems

[deusamo]

So I drove the car about 100 miles today and it was rock solid the whole trip. I parked it at a friends house, ate lunch (stayed there for about an hour), then drove home (about 10 miles). On the drive home, the temps started climbing. It was only stop-go driving for a mile or two, then it was freeway 70mph+. The car seemed to do better at low speeds for awhile, but I stopped twice to let it cool down. The temp is rock solid when it's sitting at idle, but any driving whatsoever causes it to spike. About 2 minutes worth of slow and easy driving will put the temps almost in the red. I noticed a few days ago that the car reaches operating temperature incredibly fast (2-3 minutes), but it has held a rock solid temp the whole time. It has a new radiator and new radiator cap.

Here are a few pics of the temp gauge. The first is after cooling off a little bit, and then the second is immediately after I shut it off, and then turn the key back on to let the fan run. It seemed odd that the temp dropped that much just from the engine not running.

 

[KiNgMaRtY]

Is your main fan turning on when it is suppose too?

 

[deusamo]

Yeah. The A/C fan doesn't seem to work, but the radiator fan works really well. I'm going to replace the thermostat and hope for the best. It probably hasn't been changed in forever, and it doesn't hurt to have a new one in there. When I get a chance, I'm going to try to get the a/c fan working and just wire it to a switch so I can turn it on whenever I need to.

 

[iceman69510]

Is the system full? Possibly air trapped, or you are losing coolant somewhere under pressure and it lost some volume during the drive.

 

[deusamo]

Thermostat. So happy right now.

 

[trunks]

I was going to say those are classic thermostat symptoms. It's nice when it's a cheap fix /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif