Temperature Help

Hey, i have a weird problem with my temperature
gauge on my 89 LX... When i bought the car the radiator
had brown looking water in it. When i took it home i flushed
it out and replaced the thermal stat and put some coolant in it.
The temperature gauge read that it was hot. So yesterday i took
a trip too the junk yard and bought some little sensor or valve
that goes in the top of the thermal stat housing and the temperature
gauge when up the only time it goes down is when i turn off the car
when it goes up the car is running fine and it doesn't over-heat, any help?
i suspect that my gauge cluster is messed up or something

Temp sender for the gauge is a one wire sensor on back driverside of the intake manifold. It's possible it is even just not connected and is grounding on something back there.

My temp gauge freaks out sometimes ... so i smack my cluster and it goes back to normal.. Its grounding on something. You should check the sender and the cluster.

Brown radiator water is bad news. I suspect the temp gauge is reading correctly, but you can verify that with a $14 infrared temp gauge from Harbor Freight. Just aim it at the thermostat housing and if it's higher than 185, you're running hot.

The brown water in the radiator is all the rust that used to be your cooling system. Because no one ever changed the coolant, it turned to acid and dissolved everything. Things to check include the coolant level, rad cap, cooling fan operation, bent rad fins and collapsed hoses. If that all checks out, you get to the fun stuff like obstructions in the cooling system and failed head gaskets. If you get to that point, spend some time aiming your thermometer at different parts of the radiator and cooling system to figure out where the bottleneck is. If that's not successful, you can pull the system apart and run hose water through each section by turns. The one that flows slowly is your bottleneck. Also if you didn't bleed the system after adding new coolant, you should start by doing that. Don't worry, the car will probably tell you where the problem is soon enough by springing bigs leaks and blowing rusty water all over everything! LOL

Good luck.

sounds to me like the oil pressure (or maybe the choke, i forgot) wire and the temp sender wire got swapped. this happened to me after my first rebuild, changed the wires and everything was good to go...

My car broke down on me today I took it to my friends shop, and told him about some leak he told me its the rear main seal, he saw my gauge he checked the radiator its still good for a month soon to be replaced, but when I rolled in smoke came out of my car and it smelled like burned oil and the engine was very hot and they pointed out that it my head gasket is bad, my main rear seal is bad and like you guys said the temp sender and oil pressure... So I guess I face 3 tough choices 1 spent like 600 bucks to get it running like a champ again, 2 sell the car 3 or junk it ): cuz money comes very slowww

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DatBrwn3gee

My car broke down on me today I took it to my friends shop, and told him about some leak he told me its the rear main seal, he saw my gauge he checked the radiator its still good for a month soon to be replaced, but when I rolled in smoke came out of my car and it smelled like burned oil and the engine was very hot and they pointed out that it my head gasket is bad, my main rear seal is bad and like you guys said the temp sender and oil pressure... So I guess I face 3 tough choices 1 spent like 600 bucks to get it running like a champ again, 2 sell the car 3 or junk it ): cuz money comes very slowww

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Damn my 88 lxi is reading hot always
keep me posted

So I finally made my choice, I guess I'm going to junk it )': and buy another 3gee in the near future.....

Your choice should depend on the condition of the body, more than the engine.. Its 22, you're gona have to work on shit eventually. I have tons of work to do on mine, but im not gona ditch it. Its in way too good condition body wise.

Well the condition of the body is strait it just need a new paint job. It has all interior panels all power windows work the condition of the car is great except my engine. When my aunt had it they hardly took care of the engine poor car was neglected ): . But since the money comes very slow I have no choice but to junk or sell it. If I had the money come in fast I would of had work on it and got it running but I'm gonna hate myself junking a 3gee ):

Well my friend convinced me to keep it, so I guess I'm saving up to do engine swap

LOL. Friends FTW.

It is rare for these rear mains to go bad. It's much more likely to be the distributor oring. It's $3 from the dealer and a lot easier to get to. You can buy a head gasket kit from Napa for $100 or so, which is pretty cheap. Leave the intake on when you pull the head and you'll save yourself a lot of swearing. Change all the bypass hoses while you have the head off and you'll be way ahead of the pack. Replacing all the hoses will be expensive (around $150 when I did it) but will save you a lot of heartache. Remember that tow bills can be quite a lot more than that.

Good luck!

Soo I finally decided to do with my 3gee... I sold it to a friend of mine who was really interested in fixing it and driving it.. Its kinda sad to see my car to leave my driveway but yet again I sold it to someone who can afford to fix it and get her running.. I have future plans on buying another 3gee in the near future but this time its gonna be an Lx-i

So on my 88 accord dx everything in the engine is brand new or been rebuilt it's not leaking any coolant and the gauge fluctuates. Sometimes it goes up really high then almost immediately it goes down. After driving it the radiator cap isn't hot to the touch but there is good pressure.it also seems to heat up way to fast to normal running temp. Can someone point me in the right direction as to what it is and how to go about fixing it?

The first thing I would check is the thermostat because it might be sticking. It's quick, cheap and easy to fix if that's your problem. Check out my thread on overheating, you may find some answers there.

https://www.3geez.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76213

Thanks man. That's were I'll start.

I would check the condition of the gauge sender and wire first.