Well I frequent vwvortex and do not own a honda, but a good friend of mine owns a 95 lx civic coupe that has been giving him some trouble. The car has 196,xxx miles and has a newer motor that was swapped in, although we don't know the exact mileage.
The words of my friend, "The car was overheating so i took it to the shop. They told me the thermostat was broken so the fan wasn't kicking in and they told me there was no leak in the cooling system. They replaced the thermostat and put in new coolant. The car was working fine for about a week and then it started not holding a steady idle and over heating again. However, the fan works now."

I know this is really vague, but it is worth a shot before he drops a bunch more money at a shop when I could help him fix it as I am a fairly competent mechanic, I just don't know what to look for outside of vw's.

Thanks,
Bryan

p4c

 

idk why you posted a pic of your vw for this. did you properly bleed the air out when you refilled the coolant?

 

people always click when there are pictures...or at least on the vw forums

 

lol i guess that makes sense

 

thats why i clicked!

 

Well its possible that the overheating he was experiencing caused his head gasket to go.
I'll let some more knowledgeable people chime in now. But I do know that overheating can cause your head gasket to go (and that will result in MORE overheating among other symptoms).

 

Oh, I just remembered a few symptoms If he is burning a lot of oil and coolant (he shouldn't be burning any coolant) than those are good indications. Have him keep a good eye on that for the next couple of weeks if he hasn't been already.

 

i once experienced an overheating problems where the radiator was "clogged" and wasn't flowing enough coolant to cool the engine. i ended up having to pull the radiator and get it dipped in the acid tank. (flushing the radiator wasn't sufficient enough). anyway once i did that, the car ran like a champ.

 

Make sure to bleed the air out of the coolant system with the nipple near the thermostat housing. Sounds like they may have just changed the coolant temp switch, I would try to verify that they actually did put in a new thermostat that is oriented correctly in the housing.