Hello everyone! I will go ahead and say I know very little about cars, and I am here to ask a question on behalf of my mother, who also knows very little about cars. She has a 1994 Mazda Miata which she only drives for small errands, these days. The neighbor advised her to run/idle the engine every few days for about ten minutes, to maintain the health of the car. She has noticed lately that the hood gets very hot while she is doing this. The summer heat contributes, but she feels the hood is hotter than it should be nonetheless. There is a hot/cold dial in the dashboard that points at just below halfway after the car has been idling for ten or fifteen minutes. When she drives to the grocery store, which is right around the corner, just a few minutes away, the dial has reached the just-below-halfway point by the time she gets there. Is this normal?

She needs to drive to the DMV to renew her license very soon, and that's a half-hour drive. I want to make sure her car is safe to drive that far! Thank you very much for any help.

 

sounds normal, ( without viewing the vehicle.)