selasornayr

For the past few weeks, whenever I drive in traffic, my engine temperature begins to increase. Normally, it's supposed to be sitting right under half, but now the "normal" temp seems to be right at half or a little bit above (I swapped a CRV cluster into my 00 Civic Sedan, but I had engine temp. fluctuations in traffic before the swap).

Could this be a thermostat problem? From what I've read in the archives, most people have a problem with their thermostat when they see that their engines are running too cold... so the thermostat is stuck open. But for me, mine's running too hot, but it gets insane ONLY in traffic (aka consistent low rpms). So could it be that the thermostat is stuck a little closed? Once I'm able to step on the gas and hit higher rpms, the temp. starts to go down. In normal driving (usual freeway cruising or street driving, my temperature remains the constant half of hot or a little bit above). This condition seems different from everyone else's.

Could this problem simply be a thermostat problem or something else or a combination of things? Has anyone else experienced this?

JDMallTHEway

could be a fan problem..
if your fan isn't coming on when your stopped, your car will heat up.

JDMlyfestyle

Could be one of many problems.

1. your fan is not turning on
2. you have a stuck thermostat
3. you have a Air Bubble in the cooling system.
4. Bad radiator cap
5. Bad Headgasket (Check oil and coolant to see if it looks milky... or if its not extremely cold where your at check and see for the infamous white smoke)

civictildeath

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JDMlyfestyle &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">5. Bad Headgasket (Check oil and coolant to see if it looks milky... or if its not extremely cold where your at check and see for the infamous white smoke)</TD></TR></TABLE>

wouldnt the smoke be thick and kinda hang around where the condensation white smoke just disappears in seconds??

JDMlyfestyle

the smoke will be kind of thick. when mine was bad i could see the white smoke while i was driving out my back window

selasornayr

If my fan isn't turning on, then what's the culprit? Could it be a bad fan switch?

JDMallTHEway

likely.

or your fan motor went blah

selasornayr

Man, you guys are great... I'm going to check out all of this tomorrow when I'm off of work. Now that I think of it, I don't think my fan is coming on at all. Usually, I'd sit at stoplights, and the fan would turn on (I have a bad case of alternator whine on my stereo system that I'm going to fix in a few days) and that could cause my whine to get louder, but it seems like that hasn't happened in a while...

selasornayr

Update: When I got home from work today, I left the car running and popped the hood to see if the fan would come on. Lo and behold, the fan came on, but it only came on for around 10 seconds max (this is after driving on the freeway at around 70-75 mph for 30 minutes straight). Normally, it's supposed to stay on a lot longer than that, right?

I guess this means that my fan motor is alright, since it turned on, right? So then the only thing wrong would be the fan switch. I've read (through searching) that to see if it's a fan switch problem, I just have to "jump" the wires on the sensor... what does that mean? When I looked at the sensor, I saw a green wire and a black wire going into the fan switch... how do I jump them?

(By the way, I don't think it's a headgasket problem because I looked at my oil and coolant, and they were normal looking.)

SOHC4life 96

Driving at a high speed for a long time won't heat up the car to bad. Driving at low speeds for long periods of time will heat up the engine much faster. Your fan seems to be fine. I'm not sure how to jump it though, although I have been told many times.

McNizzle

yeah most likely it is your fan switch bc had the same exact probablem...sorry i dont know how to help you jump it though. ill try and search and let u know if i come up with something....im saving this thread in my "watched topics"

selasornayr

Ok, from doing some searching, I believe jumping the fan switch is nothing more than connecting the green wire and the black wire together in order to complete the circuit.

A lot of people have chosen to use an external switch to turn on the radiator fan while still utilizing the normal fan switch located on the thermostat housing. That way, you can turn on the fan as you wish, but if you forget to turn it on, then the normal fan switch will turn on. These people have done this by tapping into the green wire (to form a "T") and connecting it to one pole of a switch. Then the other pole of the switch is grounded.

So with this in mind, it only makes sense that in order to check if the fan works, I'd just have to splice into the green and black wires and just connect them (or "jump" them). I guess if this makes my fan turn on, then it is indeed my switch that's faulty. I'd really hate to replace my thermostat if that's not the problem... I'll post tomorrow after I've tried all of this...

dantastic

when was the last time you flushed the cooling system? you might just need to change the coolant

selasornayr

The last time I changed my coolant was almost 3 years ago when I had to get a new radiator (rocks on the freeway damaged it). If I haven't changed the coolant in that long, would that contribute to the aforementioned (the #3 possible problem from jdmlyfestyle) air bubble in the cooling system?