Now that I have everything put back together and rewired, I have a few new issues...

Temp gage seems to show the car heats up fast. 220-240 in five minutes.
I have:

*new temp sensor
*new thermostat
*air bled from system

The gage also seems to want to go up when ever I turn on anything eletrical, like the lights and heater fan.
It climbs like 10-25 degrees depending on the eletrical load.
The cooling fan is wired seperatly and does remove heat from the radiator. So this makes me think the radiator is not plugged.?

Could mt gage be defective? The hot temp light does not come on at all. At what temp will this light come on???

Any ideas.

mike

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Any time a gauge spikes with electrical load...

You either have bad grounds in the engine bay or alternator problems.

Beyond that you may have a bent coolant pipe. The section from the rear support bracket to the drain bung should be straight... If it ain't you got problems.

You could also have bad water pump of blocked radiator.

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The only thing George Orwell got wrong was the year.

The Ogre's Fiero Cave (It's also at the top of every forum page...)

What year and engine do you have?Possibly a bad fan (turn on the AC and see if the fan kicks on) or a bad fan relay.If your car is idleing too fast or the timeing is advanced too much (causeing it to Idle faster) this will cause your car to most likely over heat.Have you noticed any lack of performance, like loss of power?Check for water in the oil (milkey brown color).Possibly a bad Catalitic converter take a peek at your cat at night with the engine running and let the car get warm,your cat may get red hot if it's going bad.Also look in the engine compartment at night to see if you got a blown exhaust manifold gasket...

[This message has been edited by James Bond 007 (edited 05-07-2004).]

Heres something really stupid...

I ran the car this morning without the thernostst and with the fan on and at idle it never got above 190.
This should mean i have a restriction somewhere, right?

mike

It could mean the system is blocked or you had a bad thermostat.

I still recomend you check grounds etc. Dash gauges shouldn't move because of changes in electical load.

Did you check out the thermostat before you installed it? I would guess that 25% of the new thermostats I have bought are bad.

I ran an extra ground wire from the frame to the motor. ALL connection look good. I rechecked them all to see. Must be alternator.

Tried another thermostat, same thing. Looks like I'm going to have to tear it apart again.

mike

mikey,
how long was your car apart? you may have a partial plug in the radiator from it sitting with some fluid still in it. more likely though you should use a different water temp gauge, something you can use to check the accuracy of the cars gauge. are you using a new or different temp sensor? when i swapped a bigger engine into my truck the temp sender in it makes the gauge show 3/4 scale, very near the red. it is at normal temps though, just too darn lazy to get the right sender.