When does your TStat kick on? mine didn't kick on for the entire hour drive, I WAS trying to burp the cooling system without any luck

Would a bad switch sensor cause this or just mechanical failure?
Also the car has a loped idle after it's warm, and after you give it gas the rpms drop to 600 then bounce back to 1200...


who makes a good t-stat that kicks on at 155-160*?

 

mishimoto

http://www.mishimoto.com/honda-prelu...tat-92-95.html

 

I usually made it to to the freeway before it even started blowing warm air. Thats maybe 5 minutes or a mile or two down the road.

The wax inside should expand when the water gets warm, but if cold can take maybe twenty minutes pending on outside temp and driving.

The thermostat would be a mechanical failure, yes. Its just wax that expands and contracts gets stuck.

Does it over heat? Or take forever to heat up?

 

Take your old thermostat out and boil it in water to see if it pops open.

 

make sure its in the water. but not touching anything. so tie it to a string and put it in the middle.

also a thermometer beside it to see the temp

 

Should open around 170-175F AKA 75-80C

 

car I don't think gets hot enough, since i owned it ONCE the fan kicked on..

 

Thanks for the link

 

Its probably stuck open then, which will make it take forever to warm up to temp.

If it was stuck closed it would heat up extremely fast leading to overheating.

 

Thermostats don't kick on, they open up...unless you're running a chipped ecu you never want a non oem temperature thermostat anyhow.

If you have a loping idle I would start with tightening down the fitv.

 

I had a stuck thermostat. As it progressively failed to open far enough, I noticed the engine loped at low speed. Just before failure it had a very fast idle. Thermostat was the real problem but the loping and fast idle were caused by cooling system needing to be bled. It was easy to bleed my system ('89 Prelude). Be sure to bleed after you install new thermostat.

 

thanks, these problems started when i re-placed and calibrated my TPS sensor.. so i then cleaned the FITV, tightened it down. Still have a MIL and problem...

probed ECU again and only thing im seeing is a possible code 10 for IAT, would that cause my problem?

Like if im sitting idle and give it light gas and hold it down, the RPm will jump from 2800 to 900 then go back to 2800 back down ect.. or rpms drop fast when i shift, chugs under LIGHT acceleration.

 

The IAT code will cause your car to run in limp mode so yeah you should replace it and it could be causing the ecu to screw with the iacv. It's some sort of vacuum leak. It could even be the fitv messed up now. Sometimes even tightening them back down doesn't work, once the seals wear they could just open up.

Also, since you opend up the cooling system(via the fitv) pop open the bleeder bolt and see if any air comes out. If it shoots a steady stream of coolant tighten it back down. See if that fixes it.

 

^this, 100%^
if you are using a stock ecu, never use any temp thermostat except stock temp, which is 192/195. using anything colder will screw with the ecu causing all sorts of issues, most of which cause a lack of power and worse gas mileage.

also, I think the OP is talking about his FANS not kicking on. the fans have nothing to do with the thermostat. the fans come on according to radiator temp, NOT engine temp. and they only come on if the radiator temp gets hotter than 195ish, totally unrelated to engine temp. driving at high speed keeps the radiator cold as a bone, so the fans will never come on. stop and go traffic, where there isn't enough air flowing over the radiator to keep it cool, is what causes the fans to come on. so if you're trying to see if your fans work properly, stay off the highway and stay below 30mph. best bet is to actually drive at low speeds for 20 minutes, then pull into a parking lot and just let it idle for a while. the fans will come on, and they'll probably keep turning on and off every minute or two once the sequence starts, because the engine is hot and there's no air flowing through the radiator to cool it off except when the fans come on.