1996 Accord 4cyl

I have noticed with the cold weather the heat is not always as hot as it should be. I recently took a 1 1/2 hour trip and most of the way it was warm, enough to make the car comfortable but not as hot as it should be, I drop with the heat on full blast and didn't need to turn it down. I stopped to get gas and cracked open the radiator cap and it spurted a little bit. When I got back in the heat worked just fine and I had to put it on low within 5 minutes.

When I got back home, once the car was off, I opened the bleed valve and poured coolant in, it never spurted out but there was coolant at the base of the nut so I tightened it back up.

I left the radiator cap off, turned the car on let it idle for a good 15 minutes and put the cap back on.

At first I thought it was air in the system since it cleared up after I took the cap off at the gas station but it is still hot and warm at different times.

My first guess is the t-stat, does that sound like the problem or could it be something else?

 

Are you sure the control valve is fully opening?

I would start with looking at the air mix control cable, and the control valve.

Do you know where either of these are?

 

They are close to the t-stat right?

The funny thing is when it was running warm, I stopped and then it ran hot like normal I never adjusted the control valve.

 

when my t-stat was bad it just wouldnt heat up unless i was stopped. when i was stopped it would warm up just like it should, but once i started moving then it would cool back down right away. mine was stuck partially open, i guess the best description i can come up with is that it looked like someone took it off, saw that it was stuck closed and tried to pry it open with a screw driver. LOL.

 

i would try the thermostat, its cheap and if you haven't ever done it it might be time

 

i agree with HondaPartsHero, it is a cheap part, is easy to replace, and it wont hurt anything if it didn't actually need replacing. its always nice to know when it was replaced last.

 

Thanks guys. I'll just try that first and see how it goes.

 

let me know if you need any help with it. i just did mine.