The_7

well my car has been sitting in my garage for a while. i had a new autozone tstat in but just to be sure i ordered a VB 180 degree one and that has arrived and i put that in. i installed my new water pump also. also, a while ago i but a new temp sender in. when i was removing the radiator i accidently put a small crack in the bottom which i am going to take to a shop to have fixed and im going to have them clean it out really good. dont they do something better than flushing to declog it? i thought they did i just never knew exactly what was the process was, if someone could fill me in on this that would be nice.

so, since my car is just sitting there i decided to check the guage to rule that out for sure. so rx7carl hooked me up with the ohm values for the different marks on the water temp guage. i went to radioshack and bought a bunch of appropriate resistors a few days ago. earlier today i went bought 8 feet of lamp cord. tonight at 1:30AM i got bored so i went out and soldered some mini alligator clips to the ends and i unhooked the sender wire and clipped one onto that and one onto the ground strap. i dissconnected teh fuel pump and turned the engine to the on position. i messed with teh resistors using the values rx7carl gave me and the guage checked out fine. so since the guage is in proper order and the temp sender is new, that rules out an electrical problem so now i know the car was overheating

so now i just have to get the radiator fixed, put everything back together, fire it up, and see what happens

MarkPerez

When a radiator shop does a clean up, that means they
take apart the rad. you see,,,there's a top, and a bottom, then where the fluid travels those are called 'rods' or cores. The fluid travels from the top section to the bottom, basic gravity deal...anyway,, the shop should re-rod the core, in other words pull the top off and like a rifle cleaning kit and reem the rods(core) clear so fluid flows freely. IMO. the best design for a radiator is a cross-flow, that means instead of up-down it goes from side-to-side. make sure there are NO air pockets in the engine before you install the thermostat. fill up the engine untill water is coming out the water neck then install the thermostat... I think 180' is to cold. i installed a 195' in my -SE and works OK...

The_7

is it expensive to have them re-rod it?

i could just put it in and fill the radiator and the turn the engine on and keep filling as it goes down and since the cap is off the air will get bled out of the system.