Pitch4PD

I own a 98 Civic HX with the CVT. Now that it is cold outside I am experiencing the same issue as I do every year and finally I want to fix it for good.

When driving and the air temperature is below 45 degrees outside the car has trouble warming up during my commute. If I sit idle it will warm up but if I am cruising anywhere from 40-65mph the temperature gauge will sit barely on the bottom of the normal range. When the car does warm up , if I turn the heater on I can watch the temperature gauge drop. This will drop the car will go back into warm-up mode (keeping the RPM's higher while driving).

Last year I put a piece of cardboard in front of the radiator; this helped a little but not much. Any ideas of what else I can do? I was thinking T-Stat if it isn't too hard to do. I am coming up on 100K so timing belt and water pump will be done sooner than later too.

92hatchboi

I would say you got a lil air in your cooling system and it need to be bleed

rubikscube

2 things:

1. It sounds like a bad thermostat for sure, since they fail open = cold. I would change the thermo, as well as get a coolant flush for good measure.

2. Your timing belt needs to be replaced asap. It may have less than 100k miles, but it's 10 years old, and that's way too long. I think they're good for like 7 years or so, but definitely not safe at 10 years.

Former User

Replace the thermostat and then bleed the cooling system.