Hi all,
I noticed my radiator was leaking on Saturday and got it replaced right away. Driving to work today I noticed that the temp. gauge hardly got to 1/4 and only made it over that while I was standing at the traffic light in idle. I did some reading and it would appear it might be only an air bubble meaning the guy at the shop did not bleed it right before letting me leave? Is this correct? Or could a bad sensor or Thermostat have caused the radiator to bust and that is the root cause and I should look into that? Before the radiatore leaked the temp. needle would go up just under half while normal driving.
Thanks

 

SO your issue is that it ISN'T overheating? Sound normal to me.

 

I don't think it should move once it's gets warmed up. If it moves up and down in traffic, you've got a cooling problem. Finicky slow thermostat response, air bubbles, fan control malfunction.

Actually my original Honda manual states that the needle may move to half, but not above, when driving in mountains, on a hot day. But I've never seen this happen normally. For me that's always a sign of insufficient cooling, or combined with loss of power, a misfire issue.

 

I've seen where people have posted "a little above a quarter" and it actually be right where it normally is. Post a pic.

 

Thanks all. Il will keep an eye on it and revert. Maybe the higher temp. reading before I got the radiator fixed was indeed higher because of the broken radiator and is just lower now that the radiator problem is fixed. It never overheated and I was lucky to notice the leak while I was replacing a vtec solenoid gasket to try to fix a major oil leak.
It just looks a little too low now but probably is nothting to worry about. Still getting to know my car, i have only had it since 6 weeks now and have had to do alot of work on it as it is my daily commuter vehicle and needs to be reliable.

 

If it is not jumping up and down, but consistently lower than before, you probably have the wrong thermostat. Or you had the wrong thermostat before. Either way, I'm not sure It matters much as long as its not totally running cold or hot. Probably may hurt fuel efficiency according to the Honda engineers but, really, 1 psi low in your tires will do that too.

 

Bet that old radiator was mostly bent fins/no air flow/clogged passages. If it leaked it wasn't allowing proper cooling system pressure. If it now stays at 1/4 consider yourself blessed. You might want to change the thermostat just to be safe. Stuck a little open could turn to stuck closed and result in catastrophe. Make sure the "jiggle valve" points up if you replace it.