Car over heating

[smokey8667]

Well, it isnt over heating right now, but it does run about an 1/16 inch past the straight up and down mark where the temp symbol is. In the summer time it got about 1/8 inch past the middle spot. The dsmlink said 245(Remember that was in the summer & it was about 90 degrees out). The thing about it is that it doesnt do this all the time, sometimes it will stay about 1/8 to 1/16 below normal(straight up & down) and then I'll drive it for a while longer and all the sudden it will jump on over on the other side of normal. the fan kicks on & off what seems to be normal & I can run the a/c switch to let them both run(no a/c on the car) and sometimes it will cool down below normal & sometimes it will just stay where it is. I have a new water pump, new radiator, new 160 degree thermostat, & two new 12" SPAL medium profile fans that flow 1230cfm each. I thought the fans were the issue so I bought the SPAL fans, but that didnt seem to fix the problem either. I have an SBR race front mount and no a/c condenser. Any help would be appreciated!!! Also I have not set the coolant offset on the dsmlink, I dont know if that will help or not, It seems like that even if I run the a/c fans all the time that it still tries to heat up a little. I have done everything that I know to do. Oh, one more thing, it has a new mls head gasket and arp's also. Thanks

 

[95blackGsTurbo]

Have you tried a stock thermostat? 160 seems awful low. If you get one that is too low the coolant will always be flowing instead of sealing and getting time to sit in th radiator and cool down.

 

[smokey8667]

I put one in there a while back when it had the other fans on it from autozone, but It has had the 160 in it for a while, I will order a new one and try that, I had been thinking that may be it for a couple of days, Oh over the summer when it tried to over heat on me it had that thermostat in it and two bottles of water wetter and I also cut the a/c fans on and the heat and it finally cooled back down.

 

[91 Turbo Mitsu]

How new is your radiator. You could be having flow problems with that also. And just because you have a new water pump doesnt mean it is right. I saw one once that when it got warmed up the fin on the back of the pump became loose on the shaft and would free spin.I also had a customers vehicle that I had put a new t-stat in and a month later they had problems with it getting hot while driving. Turns out the t-stat was bad.As one of the others said though you should run the correct t-stat for your car. If you have to run a colder one to keep it from overheating you have other problems that need to be taken care of. Keep us posted and we will help all we can. Travis

 

[syclone]

I noticed from your mods list you are running a frontmount, that will kill the effectiveness of the radiator a little bit, exspecially if the front mount end tanks are blocking the radiator from incoming air, it may be time for an aluminium radiator, or fans that pull more air,
just some food for thought

Jamie Sanders
1996 GSX

 

[smokey8667]

the front mount is a slowboy race frontmount so it is a bit huge, the fans I bought flow more than what slowboys fans do that they reccomend, and the radiator is about 8 months old. I may have to get the big aluminum radiator, but I dont want to unless I have to. I'm gonna try a t-stat today. I'll update you all after I get it in.

 

[No_Skillz]

Are you overheating at high speed cruise, low speed cruise, or idle? Each has a bit different solution.

In the meantime you can try a radiator flush, use coolant and DISTILLED water, a bottle of water wetter if you want. Definitely will help if you haven't done a flush in 8 months or so.

 

[smokey8667]

Ok, I put in the 192 thermostat & a bottle of watter wetter and now the guage sets either straight up and down or a little past it toward the warm side. It may not really be overheating because I checked the dsmlink and it says that the temp is 190(straight up) or 200(Right past straight up) or the highest it was tonight was 213. The fan will come on after it gets to about 210-213 and will go off at 200. If I'm cruising at say 30-50 it will hang around 200-205, if I decel to a stop it will sometimes go down as low as 190(usually196), and if I let it set idling it will go to anywhere from 205 to 213 then the fan will kick on. When the fan kicks on it will run for about 5 min or so then stay off for a few min. I have just changed the coolant about 1,000 miles ago and I tested it tonight, the freeze point is -29 and the boil over point is 268 so I guess the coolant is ok and it looks to be fine.
Thanks

 

[syclone]

If this is not cool enough for you, you can look at getting a different temperature sensor, several of these with interchange between cars, and one may kick the fans on at 205 degrees and one for a different car may kick the fans on at 195.
it takes a little research but you can find one that starts the fans earlier, most of them are a one wire set up that conects the ground wire to the fan when the thermastat inside the sensor kickes open and conects the ground to the block.

 

[95blackGsTurbo]

Do you have a heatshield on your turbo? That can heatsoak a rad. combined with a FMIC.

 

[smokey8667]

no, I dont have one on there but I was thinking about that the other day. I didnt know if that would really have that much affect on it or not, I know that it did get enough heat there to melt the wire insulation coming off the a/c fan and the connector a while back. I dont know how to shield it really with the setup the factory shields wont fit and I also have a sbr equal length manifold on it so the dump is about 3-4 inches from the back of the a/c fan. I know that manifold really puts off some heat. On my way to work this morning I ran the car a little at 18 psi through 3rd gear after it was warmed up good & the temp stayed pretty much the same(200-213). I am not sure if the dsmlink has a way of changing when the fans come on or not, but if it does that is probablly my problem because I have not really got to set down and learn the link yet.

 

[clipsit]

no, I dont have one on there but I was thinking about that the other day. I didnt know if that would really have that much affect on it or not

I would say if you have time. to ceramic coat that mother trucker.... But really, I have the AGP 50 trim, on my ported 2g manifold, w/ a ceramic coated heatshield and it gets hot, but I can touch it still after long drives or driving it hard and not get burned...and it will help prevent heatsoak and or the efficiency of that turbo by ceramic coating the manifold? But I know on my car w/ dsmlink, I don't even have the stock temp gauge hooked up on my car to look at, which I prob should, but it sounds like it's ok, and that's why mine is disconnected, so you don't worry about, since dsmlink is prob not lying to ya either......let us know though? Good luck.