I installed a Hondata heatshield gasket about 2 weeks ago and I'm having this problem. The car will run fine at first, but if I drive it hard, it will overheat. It's not like its reaching the temp gauge redline, but it goes way past the middle marker into the hot zone. I changed the thermostat and radiator cap but the problem persists. I did notice that the coolant reserve is filled up to the top; it was only full up to the mark on the bottle (a little more than halfway). I also saw some spilled coolant around the reserve bottle and it looks like the coolant came from the bottle cap. I would really welcome your thoughts about this. Maybe I goofed on the cooland hoses when I reinstalled the intake manifold ?? I'm looking into that right now. Help please !!

 

I just had this same problem in my civic but not after a hondata gasket install. Isnt there a tab you are supposed to remove or leave on the gasket? I heard that can cause over heating problems but not sure exactly.

does the car burn up coolant or smoke from the exhaust? did you notice the coolant being dirty at all? Did you inspect and/or replace the upper and lower radiator hoses when you did the thermostat? Are you sure the coolant level was sufficient and no "air pockets"?

for my civic, I had got a new radiator and theromstat, but the car ended up over heating a short time later. The coolant was really dirty, and a hose was bulging and obviously needed to be replaced. So I replaced the thermostat again and both hoses, then got a system flush, and so far so good.

 

Did you tee and reroute the coolant hoses like you're supposed to if you installed it as a race gasket?

 

if installed correctly, maybe this is happening due to low coolant level? is your coolant level betwenn low/max mark in reservour tank? maybe double check make sure coolant is in there and its not stains from coolant.

 

Well, the setup I used retained the opening to allow the coolant flow into the head (NOT the race setup). There was not much choice since the gasket came with the opening already made. I flushed the coolant and replaced it with fresh coolant. The original fluid was not dirty at all (the car has only 30k miles and I flush the coolant once a year). I am now checking the hoses to make sure I didn't screw up on any of them.

My only clue is the fact that the coolant reserve bottle is filling up to the top and it actually leaks coolant out of the top. If I can figure out why the coolant is flowing back into the reserve bottle, I think I can fix the problem. Any clues ??

 

Could an airlock cause this?

 

Airlock as in air bubbles in the cooling system ?? That's an interesting proposition. If the intake manifold is not tight enough around the part where the coolant runs, could it be sucking in air and creating bubbles in the cooling system ?? Does this make sense to anyone ?? Please let me know !!