Car is an 88 legend AT. Car runs fine in normal use but in traffic car overheats and has to be ran with heater on. What could this be? I have a friend who will sell it to me and he only wants 500 for it. Just wondering if its worth the money and trouble. O yea car also leaks oil but hey it's clean and only 500.

 

Typically an overheating problem is caused by a faulty thermostat. This is a $20 part and is very easy to install with hand tools. Change it out before you buy the car to make sure it doesn't continue to overheat.

If that doesn't fix it, it's usually a blown headgasket, and that's much more difficult/expensive to fix...

 

cool thanks. When the gasket is blwon the radiator fluid or oil would be cloudy right?

 

Yes unless the blown head-gasket is allowing coolant & combustion chamber to mix and not coolant/oil...

 

and white smoke would be pouring out the exhaust.

 

Not necessarily true. I had an EP3 with a blown HG and it just overheated a little bit with no smoke whatsoever.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by CompanyFlow &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Not necessarily true. I had an EP3 with a blown HG and it just overheated a little bit with no smoke whatsoever.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Same as another thread I was reading recently. The car was simply overheating. The poor guy replaced the thremo-stat 3 times, the radiator, the radiator cap, flushed the coolant, and was about to buy & replace the heater core when he realized it could be the head gasket. He took it in and had it checked out, and sure enough it was the culprit. It caused exhaust to slowly fill the coolant passages of the motor, which was the reason for the overheating...