freind juss bought a 94 civic ex. all stock with 199,243k miles. drives fine except for a sloppy shifter. one main prob ive seen is the temp guage reads hot as soon as he stops moving and the cooling fan comes on as it should. as soon as he starts to drive the temp returns to normal. we have yet to go thru this car all the way. planning on replacing plugs, wires, dizzy cap, etc. in the next few days. whoever had this car didnt do maintenance at all and even let the wipers get so bad the rubber was totally gone and metal brackets scratched deep grooves into the windshield! lol idiots

 

Is the coolant low in the radiator or reservoir? Have you bled the cooling system?

 

i dont know if hes checked the coolant level yet. hes had this car a day and is still driing his neon. were going to be working on it this weekend

 

check for any coolant brown in color, symptoms you stated are what happens on my girls taurus when the water pump impellers are rusted away, replacing the water pump and flushing the coolant usually solves the problem

 

and if the previous owner took that good care of it, i'd be willing to bet thats the original timing belt too. i'd replace it when you look into the water pump!

 

yeah thats a def thing on the list. i mean seems whoever had this car never even opened the hood and just drove it. i can only imagine what the oil looks like

 

temp sending units are like 20 bucks id recommend doing that along with rest or your maintanence, start by bleed the system correctly like Ron stated above.

 

well we installed a short shifter, shifts soo much better than that stock rusted out pos lol. i added coolant and bled the air out. so far theres no issues with the temp guage and the cars running at the proper temp at idle now. im glad it was something that easy. next its proly the timing belt. 200k and who knows when it was changed last or if it ever was!

 

he shoulda just bout the ef... lol..