How do I know my Honda Accord EX 94 automatic, water pump is working?

I recently drain the coolant and refilled it. When I went to bleed it from the bleed valve, nothing would come out unless I squeezed the upper or lower heater hose with the engine on and radiator cap installed.

I could have sworn when I replaced the coolant on my 92 Accord LX automaticm when I open the bleed valve, coolant shot out.

Mentioned previously on an older thread.

The temp gauge almost goes to max, just below red even though the coolant is cold or warm after turning motor on for 2 or 3 minutes. No coolant in oil and no coolant out of exhaust. Replace temp gauge and sensor with same problem. Car does not over heat, I can drive for hours and not have any steam coming out and I do not have any loss of coolant.

When driving, and the air is cold outside, the temp gauge does not go down.

Leaving car in garage and engine running and when after 20 minutes, the fans turn on and off, the fans do not reduce the temp gauge.

 

Start the engine cold with the radiator cap open. As the thermostat opens the coolant in the radiator will start flowing.
You may be airbound (a bubble trapped somewhere in the coolant system). It's sometimes required that you raise the nose of the vehicle to get that bubble to travel to the radiator where it can be purged. The purge port is not always effective.

P

 

I jacked the car up off the wheels and still have no luck dealing with this problem.

I tried "Burping" the system by squeezing the tubes with no luck.

Eventually with the car warming up, the coolant level slowly rose over the filler neck of the radiator.

 

It sounds (although rare) that you may have a tempurature sender failure for the dash gauge.
It certainly doesn't sound like it's overheating.
If you can get your hands on a mechanical thermometer (must be able to exceed 220 degrees), place it in the radiator and let the engine reach operating temp; you'd be able to determine who (or what) is lying.

P

 

I will see if I can find a temperature probe that goes above 220 degrees. I did replace the sender unit on the engine block as well with no luck.

I even got a complete gauge cluster from a different Accord and the temp gauge on that unit gave me similar results.

I'm tempted to goto the local jiffy lube to have a radiator flush performed, but I think I did an ample job of flushing it over the last weekend however.

 

I read thru this thread...
If the wire from the sending unit to the gauge is grounding "somewhere" it will cause the gauge to read hot.
If my old memory serves me correctly, the temp sending unit should have 5-7 ohms at room temp and drop down to around .5 ohms on a fully warmed engine.

 

I bypassed the sender wire and ran a new one behind the gauge and still had the same problem.

The sender ohm value with car cold is .780 (for give me on my ohm meter, I really don;t know how to determine which range I need to use).

With car warm for only 2 minutes and the gauge reading 3/4. ohm value = .291

Coolant is cold at the radiator cap. Engine block feels hot, but not enough to burn skin.

 

Simple question, but is the thermostat stuck closed? have you looked into that?

 

Yes. it has a new honda thermostat in it.

 

I pulled the spark plugs today and I think they have about 50k miles on them.

They were not overly dirty. The metal piece you gap had a slight coating of white powder like material on it that easily came off a little sanding.

Are used plugs supposed to be white? or should they be black? I pulled all 4 and they all had the same white color.

 

White typically means the engine is running hot, but without seeing them, it is hard to say exactly. reading plugs is a bit of an art.

 

white = lean
black = rich

most newer cars usually run a bit lean though.

anyways, to test a waterpump, just look at it while running and see if its leaking or not. 2nd test would be to just take it out and look at it. theres not much that can go wrong with a water pump lol

if the fins are still on the pump, and it still spins, than it works.

 

doing what frosti suggested, means pulling all of the belts and what-not... might as well do a timing belt-waterpump replacement if you go this route...

yea, did u verify if there was coolant weeping out of the pump's hole?

when you changed out the coolant, did you also put the heater to full blast/ hot? so the air purges out of the heater core as well?

 

Yes I did have the heater on full blast when I replaced the coolant.

I got a new thermostat and gasket from honda sitting on my desk. I plan to remove old thermostat and reinstall everything else minus thermostat.

In theory? the engine temp should remain cold for at least 5 minutes when the car is turned on right?

If temp gauge goes to 3/4 to hott, then I obviously got some problems right?

 

They should be light brown / grey, never black (or wet).
If they appear white, but the car doesn't exibit any surging or really bad hesitation; I wouldn't worry about it.
Black would indicate either driviing really short trips or an over-rich condition.

P