Just a quick question about a situation that happened tonight.

Coming home from work encountered a traffic jam and after about 30 mins I accelerated to find the engine pinging and sluggish and acted like it was overheated. After a few minutes of running at approx. 30 mph, things came back to normal.

I didn't hear the fan operating but wouldn't the temp gauge read the engine over temperature?

The temperature gauge read normal but after arriving home 10 mins later, the car smelt very hot and like it had been overheated. The temp gauge always read normal.

Any suggestions please.

 

maybe its a bad temp gauge?

ask babyhuey

 

The gauge shows cold at start and slowly comes to just below the half way position at regular operating temp so was thinking towards it being ok.

Even the car smeling very hot and like it had been overheated, it also had a lack of power just after getting out of the traffic jam and made that overheating sound (pinging and sounding not happy) so I ran very very slowly to get the air running through the radiator and felt the enging cooling slightly and it started running better.

I didn't have much choice due to the traffic and construction area to pull over so decided to baby the engine for a few minutes to see what would happen.

Anyway, got home and thats when I realilized I must have been close to a major overheat situation if I had been in traffic much longer.

I'm sure babyhuey will see this and like others will give advice if possible.

Thanks so much...

 

most common would be thermostat failure, or radiator cap failure. check your coolant resevoir. is it full, or do you have to add coolant? if the answer is add, your cap is probably bad. what happens is the cap cant hold pressure, so the coolant bleeds out. then, eventually, there will not be enough coolant in the system, so you get an overheat situation.

 

I have a 1996 626. Had problems with overheating twice with it. Both times this was due to low coolant levels. The first time this was caused by a worn bearing causing fluid to leak through the "weap hole" in my water pump. The second time due to a small hairline fracture in the plastic component of my radiator. In the first case I just changed the water pump and was back in business. The second problem, hairline leak, is minor enough that I can add coolant when needed. Will eventually have to change the radiator too though.

I did have similar problems though, heating in traffic then a reduction in temperature once I was able to move some additional air over the radiator. Def a coolant level problem.