Hey guys, I've searched all kinds of overheating topics and can't find this exact problem ....

95 LX accord ... 230K miles

My car overheats (well, gets into the red) only when my a/c is running. I thought it was something else as it had been doing it all summer and it was a hot summer, but now that it's cooled down a bit and i haven't used my a/c, it never does it. To test my theory, I put the a/c on this morning when it was 35 degrees and my car started going up into the red about 3 minutes after i started it. as soon as i turn a/c off, everything is fine again as it gradually goes down to the normal heat in about 2 minutes. I literally never have a problem when the a/c isn't running.


Modified by fleetmack at 3:49 PM 10/15/2007

 

If you let it go into the red, then turn the AC off again, does the temp gauge immediately drop back to normal? If it does, you might have a bad thermostat. Just a shot in the dark.

 

not immediately, but over the course of a couple minutes

hoping not the t-stat, i'm sure for you hardcore guys that's no problem to swap out, but when i did it the first time it took me a couple hours, what a pain in the *** spot to put a t-stat!