My 96 accord for some reason started doing this when I went to the store yesterday, while at a few red lights my car would over heat around a quarter after the middle mark and then rapidly cool itself down. Normally the first thing that would be checked is the thermostat but I threw that away ages ago and the car ran pretty much fine without one down here in florida. I've also checked to make sure the hoses were secured thus is why I didn't see any coolant or oil leaks anywhere, by chance could it be a bad sensor?

 

So what your trying to say is it overheats at the red light then cools down when you start to move? First I'd check your antifreeze level make sure its full, put your thermostat back in, check for leaks do a pressure test on the cooling system if possible. I actually had a car do exactly what yours is doing with a bad head gasket, water pump or even just low on antifreeze so check all of the basics first. How many miles are on the car? When was the timing belt last changed? One more thing check to ensure both of your fans are running.

 

Sounds like the antifreeze is either low or one of the fans isn't working.

 

I recently had to do a complete overhaul on the entire car it self, all belts are replaced and have less than a weeks worth of mileage on them, water pump was replaced last year and I'll add some more coolant to the car and watch the temp gauge for a day or two and will report back. I did notice that some times only 1 fan would come on though, I had assume both fans would piggy back off of each other and not come on at the same time.

The car has apx 119k miles on it, replaced the radiator, hoses. all that good stuff about 6 months back.

 

If the AC is on, both fans should be running.

My money is on a bad fan. You can jump them to the battery to test if they power on or not. If they don't power on then it's likely a bad motor (replace the fan). If they come on then it could be a fan switch or something else.

 

MY AC line has a leak some where so I never run it. Also I forgot to mention it cooled down while I was idling as well.

 

Sounds like low coolant. In fact, you sound like you know it is low. So if this is the case...you need to find out where the coolant is going.

 

Even if you don't care for a thermostat, you will still need the restrictor portion to allow the correct amount of flow for proper heat transfer. A gutted thermostat will look like a large fender washer.