Well earlier this month I did a somewhat decent degreasing of my engine, and I had a couple electrical problems afterward which cleared themselves up after a day or 2.
One of them was my coolant temperature guage -- it would read full (grounded). It finally fixed itself (I *THINK*), and under normal driving the needle is directly on the right edge of the LED. However, in even semi-stop and go (and most urban driving in San Francisco) the guage reads about 3/4. My fan does come on, and it never overheats, although today on the way home the oil light flashed for a second with an audible alarm which went away as quick as it came. My oil temp in normal driving is about 208 according to the MFA, and never ever goes past 232 (and when it hits that it's only for a minute). From the archives, I can tell that this is probably good/normal. However, why is my coolant guage reading so high? Is it or the sending unit malfunctioning? If so, why does it read close to the LED like normal in regular highway driving? When it *is* running at 3/4 or so, I tend to think that the guage is not functioning because my car exhibits some distinctive symptoms when its really hot -- slow to drop to idle, high idle, etc-- and these symptoms manifest themselves when the reading is like this. Any thoughts? Once I figure out how to do a proper coolant flush on this thing I plan to do that. Also, the bentley shows 2 hoses to be removed to drain coolant. The main one is obviously the lower radiator hose, but what is the smaller one? Will that drain the block? Thanks for any ideas. -Mark
