ECOTEC engines and coolant temps - Maintenance and Repair Forum
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I've noticed, ever since I got the Cavalier, that when driving, the coolant temp stays just under or on 195. However, if sitting still, even on a cool day, the temp will rise to two "notches" above 195. This is somewhat concerning, when you come from driving a Honda Civic, where the coolant temp NEVER rises above normal unless something is very wrong. Is this normal, then, for the Cavalier? Does DEXCOOL really suck that bad? Or could there be a future problem I should look out for?
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We all drive in a yellow Cavalier...
It is normal. Cooling fans don't kick in until about 2 notches above the 195 mark.....
yeah its normal because the coolant isnt flowing as fast and if you are sitting there, then there isnt much more air flowing over the radiator. as soon as you start going or even if you are sitting there the fan will kick on and you will be fine.
OK. Remember, I'm coming from a Honda Civic, where in the same conditions the temp NEVER moves once it hits the normal mark, unless something goes really wrong, in which it will shoot up to the H mark in a matter of seconds.
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We all drive in a yellow Cavalier...
Impreza WRX wrote:OK. Remember, I'm coming from a Honda Civic, where in the same conditions the temp NEVER moves once it hits the normal mark, unless something goes really wrong, in which it will shoot up to the H mark in a matter of seconds.
how can we foret... you just told us that
and your cav is stil lnormal no matter what your civic did
On some cars, the gauges get a modified signal from the engine control unit. Unless there is something wrong, the gauge reads normal. My wifes Ford Focus does the exact same thing as the 'great' Honda mentioned. Once the car is warm, the gauge never moves. It reads the same when it is -20C or when it is +40C and the AC is on.
In essence, these gauges are just good looking idiot lights.
The Civic, though, was OBD1 and had more directness in its gauges. Shoot, when it had air in the system the one time I blew off a coolant hose (my fault - forgot to clamp it) and reattached it, the gauge was going all over the place, cold, hot, cold, hot, everywhere as air then coolant then air would be rushing past the temp sensor.
Now, as for temp needle movings, I drove an old 1991 Ford Explorer with a bajillion miles on it (and it is a real beater, ready to explode at any moment), and it's "normal" temp is very wide.
The gauge has "C" then spanning almost the whole range is "NORMAL" then "H". When driving the temp would be somewhere between the "O" in normal to the "A" in normal, and with the fact that the "O" is close to "C" and the "A" is real close to "H" it's kind of the thing you pay lots of attention to. You watch as the temp rises and it's like "uh oh its gonna overheat" and then it hits the "A" and stops on it's temperature charge and you think "aaaaaalmost!!!"
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We all drive in a yellow Cavalier...
you could try puttin in an electric fan if it'll make you feel better... and unfortunately, I know about those Honda temp gauges (I got stuck with an '89 CR-X.. the temp gauge got to the red in a matter of seconds and within a minute of that, I fried the motor... POS)
R.I.P. JessE Gerard 7.11.87 - 1.25.08
The Radiation Nation Facebook Twitter Twisted Metal Alliance
The temperature gage in my Subaru Legacy never moves.
When the thermostat went bad, it did go up and down but we were facing a problem.
The cooling fan kicks on and off at all times and the temperature never moves.
The cavalier I had, the temperature went up and down.
195F on the high way and the fan did not come on until 230F degrees and then it went back down to half.
I did not like that very much.
I believe the temperature should stay the same at all times.
if the temperarature goes over 198F degrees, the cooling fan should turn on because that is what is there for.
my advice is, turn the AC or the heater on or don't worry unless it goes over 3/4 or to the red zone.
234_SAVE_US..evan.9822.jpg wrote:you could try puttin in an electric fan if it'll make you feel better... and unfortunately, I know about those Honda temp gauges (I got stuck with an '89 CR-X.. the temp gauge got to the red in a matter of seconds and within a minute of that, I fried the motor... POS)
The Honda D-series engines are rather sensitive to overheating. One very short overheat can warp the cylinder head, or at the very least damage the head gasket. They are also very tiny engines (1.5 liters!) and only use a minuscule amount of coolant, so if it starts overheating, it's going to be very quick. It's a rule of thumb that you shut down that engine when it hits the H no matter what! Never run it hot ever!
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We all drive in a yellow Cavalier...
yea, it was a 1.5 HF.. it was all I could afford at the time and the only car I could buy at 11pm 'cause I HAD to have a car the next day (new job). what happened was the cops broke up the local street races and at the time, I only had the car 3 days, so it wasnt registered to me yet, I had no insurance on it and the tag from my recently wrecked Z24 was on the back.. and cops were checkin IDs before you could leave, so I pushed the car onto a dark side road (in the middle of nowhere) and got lost for 2 hrs.. when I got out, I noticed I was just under the H so we stopped every 5 minutes to put water in it... a few miles from home, I said 'f it' and tried to make it without stopping again.. a torn heater core hose was the culprit.... I overestimated the car 'cause my first Cavalier (an '85 Type 10) ran for 17 miles in the red and never hurt the motor.. I figured I could do it with the "good ole" Honda..
R.I.P. JessE Gerard 7.11.87 - 1.25.08
The Radiation Nation Facebook Twitter Twisted Metal Alliance
hey, i did that with my 1.9 SOHC saturn engine....
ran it for like 4 weeks, low on coolant, till smoke would come out from under the hood. then open the cap using a thick cloth, wait for the last bit of water to boil out and refill.... keep driving....
it lasted four weeks, and then oil started floating in my coolant..... lol
oh well
it was fun.... car had 350km on it anyway...
if it still bothers you, you can buy HPTuners and set your fan to come on at a lower temperature...
Unlike American motors, which overbuild everything, but with slight (okay, quite large) margins for quality control. Japanese designs favor using as little material as necessary to keep a system reliable, and have very high standards for quality control. The D15 is no exception. That's why it dies so quickly upon overheating, but it can still run hundreds of thousands of miles before it really dies.
I do, however, have a story of someone that did that in his '90 Civic (which still drives today lol) on the highway, where it went to the H, started knocking, and eventually, with a big puff of black smoke stopped running. Surprisingly, one machined cylinder head and a gasket later, that engine was back in action!
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We all drive in a yellow Cavalier...
dam them honda motors are touchy lol. your cav is fine though mine does the same exact thing. well i think all 3 of my cavie's did it lol. once it hits the 2nd hash about 195 i can hear my coolant fan turn on. then it drops to normal
Silly ricer, useless wings are for penguins.
I just wonder why GM designed such a huge margin of error before the fan is set to turn on. There has to be a reason they did it that way instead of more of a norm "slightly above operating temp turn it on" approach. Here they push near the limit of the cooling system and then have the fan turn on. TBH I'm concerned I might push it hard out of a traffic area with the temp that high and it might overpower the cooling system, or that those major oscillations in temps might cause slightly faster wear on the engine. Not that the tremendous oscillation in temps on the Explorer is something to look about... (see post about the Explorer)
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We all drive in a yellow Cavalier...
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