Andrew,
My car behaved similarly a few years ago (91 GTI 16V - stock). In the
summer, as I kept driving it daily to work, it kept getting hotter and
hotter on both the temperature gauge and the MFA until I had to turn off the
AC to get the overheat light to go off. No leaks, level OK, water pump OK,
radiator fan (single fan) ran OK. I flushed the system, using Prestone super
coolant flush, refilled w/distilled water and new coolant. This helped the
temperatures drop about 10 degrees per MFA but didn't really solve the
problem. I reflushed the system cleaned/power-washed the outside of the
radiator and installed a low temperature thermostat (80 C). This made the
car warm up a little slower but didn't help the overall temperature issue. I
finally bought a new (stock) radiator and installed it. Problem solved. My
old radiator must have had too much internal corrosion for good heat
transfer. I can now run the AC in the summer, in traffic, with no
overheating.
HTH,
GBergthold
From: Andrew White <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: [a2-16v-list] help! overheating problem!
Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 11:58:35 -0400
OK- so I have an overheating problem, but I'm not really sure the car is
actually overheating. It's a 1992 16v GLI 2.0, and I just had the
headgasket replaced last week by a good shop. They checked the head, it
wasn't warped at all- was in great shape. Since then, I've been running
hot- about 3/4 on the temp gauge, about 224-234 on the oil gauge. The car
has a brand new low-temp thermostat, as well as a passat dual radiator fan
set up. Should be nice and cool. The odd thing is that the overheating
light keeps on coming on- sometimes about about 5/8ths of the way up the
temp gauge, sometimes at about 220 for oil temps. The car doesn't seem to
be over heating (and the coolant level is not low). The radiator fan kicks
on fine, but the temperatures it comes on at does not seem to reflect what
my gauges are reading. I've tried a few things (see below) to no avail- has
anyone got any ideas? It's really fustrating, my next step might be to
replace the actual coolant temp sensor and see if that helps.
What I've done:
1. "Burp" the coolant system to get out air bubbles, there were some, but
not a ton (am going to redo that today)
2. Tried bypassing the coolant level sensor, overheat light still came on.
3. Clean up the wire on the coolant temp sensor, overheat light still came
on.
4. Put in a new thermostat (180 degree), overheat light still came on.
5. Checked timing- was right on.
The odd thing is that sometimes my oil temps hits 230 on the highway when I
have the A/C on, and the overheat light comes on. Turning off the A/C cools
the car back to about 224, overheat light goes off. It sounds like a flow
problem to me, but the radiator heats across the whole thing, it looks like
I have good flow back to the return bottle, and the water pump is not
leaking/makes no noise.
Help!!
Andrew
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