This is on an 01 Civic EX with custom turbo kit.

Recently, I have started to have cooling problems. Any day it is over 90 degrees, the car starts to get too warm at stoplights but then cools right back down as soon as I drive. At night or on cooler days, the car does not do this, the temperature stays constant.

I think it's the intercooler blocking airflow to the radiator and the stock fans are not capable of pulling enough air through. I put my hand behind the fan on my car and with another stock 01 Civic and there is noticeably reduced airflow on mine.

One of my friends keeps telling me that I have blown my headgasket, but I have not noticed any mixing of coolant and oil either in the oil or coolant reservoir, or any white smoke/coolant smell coming out of the tailpipe. Compression test last night gave perfect results as well, and the car is not eating any coolant.

Could I be wrong about the headgasket... and if so, are there any other ways to check the headgasket or other symptoms I should notice before pulling the head off?

By the way, I still have stock radiator and cooling fans, and am currently running 1/3 coolant 2/3 water mixture.

 

What might help a little is to put some redline waterwetter into the coolant to help it out.. Or maybe go to a FAL fan or something like that.. Im not sure that will solve you problem but it might help it out some..

 

The IC isn't going to block that much flow, but w/ the turbo there is going to be more heat. I had the same problem on my '00 Integra LS. We initially went w/ a Civic radiator for clearance and on any days over 90 (lots of those during summer in GA) the temp gauge would steadily start to rise at stops. Get moving and some airflow, and it would be ok. I had 2 aftermarket slim fans on there, and it wasn't enough.

Water wetter didn't help the problem, or at least not enough to notice. It only went away after we got picked up by Fluidyne and got a new full size radiator.

 

https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=765559

ONE OF THESE

 

The car already has a full across radiator stock, but it's not aluminum. The one Kabaroo posted won't fit, there are no previous generation full across radiators that fit without a lot of modification.

Koyo has a full aluminum radiator for my car, I just wanted to make sure it's not the headgasket before I ordered that.