1999 Honda Civic heats in traffic with air on

1999 HONDA CIVIC
175,000 MILES • 4 CYL • 2WD • AUTOMATIC
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BUGOFF
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This car has a new radiator, cap, hose, water pump, timing belt, fan relay, air compressor clutch relay, tempurature sending unit, temperature sensor and air removed. The fan does come on but probably not quick enough and does not stay on very long (sometimes). It does not lose water nor have signs of a head gasket problem. It has not overheated while I have owned it. The problem has developed this summer.

If you turn the air as cold as possible and the fan up the tempurature will climb in stop and go traffic. The tempurature will drop as speed is increased.

The temperature will stay low if the air is moderately cold and the fan is low.

The fan does come on but at various levels of tempurature.

With the air on should the engine fan be on constantly or is it controlled by the tempurature? It has a separate condensor radiator (and fan) for the air conditioning and a separate radiator with it's own fan for the engine. The condensor fan runs continuously with the air on. The engine fan comes on based on temperature.

It acts like the engine fan is not coming on when it should or staying on long enough.
Jun 24, 2010 at 4:40 PM
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F4I_GUY
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The cooling fan is controlled by a fan switch/sensor. If this fan switch cannot properly read the coolant temperature, the fan will be un-able to properly cool the engine.

I'd take a look at that switch first.
Jun 27, 2010 at 9:28 PM
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BUGOFF
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We hot wired the temperature sensor so that the engine cooling fan runs all of the time. We finally got all (most) of the air out of the cooling system. Since we could not tell for sure if this was the beginning of a head gasket leak we added Bars Leak Copper Block Sealer to the radiator.

So far the car runs cool with no temp flucuations both in stop and go traffic and at 80 mph on the freeway.

I had a 3.8 ford that took 5 years to slowly blow a head gasket. So I decided to try the block sealer as a precaution.

I am not sure if I can trust the car now on long trips. If it is a head gasket it will blow some time but this buys me time. I may get a different car or do the head in the next 6 months.
Jun 28, 2010 at 12:03 PM
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