1996 Accord EX Vtec...180k-ish miles

New Radiator, new coolant, new thermostat.

After driving for about 30-45 minutes straight the car will start to get warm. It will then creep towards the red.

I noticed it moving towards the red portion on the guage while i am stopped or in traffic. If i rev the motor i can get the temp gauge to move down.

Is this a waterpump problem?

or Im thinking its maybe the temp sensor and the fan isn't coming on when it should.

at Idle the temp crawls toward the rev...blip the throttle the temp comes down, hold the throttle and i can get it back to normal temp.

Help...i've almost overheated in serious traffic on a bridge twice already.

 

I suspect one of two things may be happening.
1) Either you're air-bound. (There's a rather large bubble trapped in your coolant system keeping the coolant from circulating) OR
2) The coolant fan(s) aren't working.
Do you hear the fans cycling? Do they come on after you shut the car off?

Sometimes after opening up the coolant system (like 4 a water pump replacement) a bubble gets trapped. In rare cases, the system bleed port isn't sufficient to properly purge all the air. I've sometimes had to resort to tilting the car's nose skyward with the radiator cap off, whereupon it gave a good belch and I was able to top the system off.

P

 

Until you get this figured out, you can also use the heater to cool things down too, blower motor on high, if this gets too hot inside the car for you then lower the windows.

 

I think it might be a air bubble. Just this morning i heard a large gurgle come from the dash...never heard that noise before. I'll try to "burp" the system of the air.

I know the fan comes on after i shut off the car...not sure if its coming on while the car is running

 

same thig happend to my girlfriends saturn. would b fine on the highway because of the constint airflow from the wind, but as soon as she was at a red light it would start to get hot. i thought it could have been a bubble in the coolint system so i just flushed the coolint and it fixed the problem. just for the sake of knowing,is there a way to "burp" the system?
other than flusting the coolint?

 

Parking it nose up on a San Francisco hill would do the trick. But for those that don't like on 20% grades, a set of car ramps will do just nicely (Thank You).
You're looking to make the radiator filler neck the highest point on the system. It varies between generations as to how much you have to raise it... but it's usually not that bad :-)

P