just had this honda halla for two months was based in jos so i was transferred to lag and i got into traffic and the temp reaches the top.
have washed the radiator which is the big type but it still persists.
what is the solution,it still rises even if the ac is on.I hardly used the ac while in jos.

i can almost guarantee u its the thermostat. change it. if you've changed it recently, i think it might be a fake one. go to the dealer or a reputable auto parts store and get a new one.

In alternative, to that, to go ghetto, remove the thermostat you have in there and DONT PUT ANYTHING for a while and see how it goes (Your A/C might not work as it should) but its better that risking ruining the engine by blowing the head gasket.

Lastly, ALWAYS fill with antifreeze. Dont be cheap. You can fill with water to make sure its not overheating. after you're satisfied with the performance, replace with antifreeze.

check water pump too. Remove the thermostat, put it in boiling hot water, if it opens up and closes in cold water, it works.Check for leaks if your reservoir is always going low you have a leak somewhere.

You can buy a liquid coolant too. But I bet its most likely the thermostat, btw whats the average outdoor temprature at Jos.

More than likely, you've blown the head gasket. You need to consider what caused it. A Honda's head gasket outlives the vehicle because the engine doesn't run as hot as a Mercedes would. Check your fan, water pump, thermo, and other related component. If all is good, check to see if the engine was probably rebuilt. In otherwords, certain principles may have been ignored when the engine was being coupled. If not, then the former owner had been running the vehicle hot and did not disclose it to you. You have a blown head gasket and you are lucky to be in Nigeria where the labour is cheap. In Texas, you might as well buy another vehicle because it's almost a 2 day job at @ $109 an hour (dealers rate).

I agree with Ivvie, the top Gasket might just have been blown.This happened to me last week, a Honda Halla too.My Electrician worked on my car and didn't fix the fan well, so i drove the car for the whole day without fan and didn't know also didn't watch my temperature, when i finally saw it, it was almost shooting past the H signal, the oil as the is always is got mixed with water from the Radiator, i had it fixed but man it was a whole day job and a bit costly too, depending on the mechanic, it's between 4k-10k.
Go check your top Gasket, it might just be the case and please STOP using the Ac cos it's worsens the problem unless you wanna buy new engine.
I hope this helps, it might not be the case but the chances are high that it is, cheers

U seem to be in luck fella.

What u need to to is REMOVE the thermostat completely and fill up that radiator with coolant and . When my mechanic did it to my civic i almost had his head, but since then, it been fantastic. I was on Awolowo Road in traffic for 3 HOURS one thursday evening and the gauge never passed it mid point mark.

adrian5:

You seem to be in luck fella.

What u need to to is REMOVE the thermostat completely and fill up that radiator with coolant and . When my mechanic did it to my civic i almost had his head, but since then, it been fantastic. I was on Awolowo Road in traffic for 3 HOURS one thursday evening and the gauge never passed it mid point mark.

It could be as simple as the thermostat but it only controls the fan and actuate the system that releases the coolant to transfer the heat.  But from your explanation, you've blown a gasket and what you need is serious mechanical repair. 

Adrian5, coolant does not cool the engine.  What it does is it prevents rusting and transfers heat.  It's the water that cools the engine.  Coolant does not cool your engine.  Filling up your radiator with coolant is not a thermodynamic principle to control heat.

I once had a jetta automatic with factory ac and all of a sudden one day the temp starts overheating. i bought a new radiator, changed the gasket, water pump, poured in only coolant, i was also advised to purge the gas in the compressor that the ac was blocked.

i did all these  but the temp still kept rising. I spent about 50k in all, until some one advised me to change the condenser. Voila that was the solution.

So guy it may be that the condenser is blocked.

cheers

Hi,
You do NOT want to leave the thermostat out of the engine. The purpose of the thermostat is to cause the engine to come up to proper operating temperature quickly. It is damaging for an engine to run cold.
Coolant added too water, helps lubricate the water pump and also prevents corrosion inside the engine. Overheating can have many causes, fan belt not tight enough, block radiator, thermostat, head gasket( will see bubbles in coolant when that happens) plus many others.
Regards

If your engine is over heating check the following:

1. Coolong fan, if belt driven check the belt, if its intact check for slack, if its too slack it will not turn efficiently. If its electric does it come on when the it is supposed to ?, if not the electrics need to be checked i.e. fuses and relays also get the radiator thermostat switch checked, its a switch which is screwed in to the radiator, its poupose is to turn on the elctric fan when the temperature of the water in the radiator reaches a certain point typically between 85-98 degree centigrade.


In response to some of the answers other have given I need to clarify a few of them

1. Blown head gasket - A sure sign of a blown head gasket is the color of your coolant, when you open the expansion tank you'll see a mixture of oil and water in most cases also you'll notice that the car does not pull very well, it will lack power and also your engine will reach hogh temperatures very quickly 5-10 minutes.
You can also get a compression test done, this will surely tell you if your gasket is blown.


2. Removing the thermostat can certainly help , its purpose is to enabe the engine to reach optimal operating temperature about 80 degrees centigrate or so, at this point it opens fully to allwo coolant to flow to the radiator to be cooled down. In Nigera where the ambient temperature can be as high as 28 degrees centigrade in the morning plus the fact that you are bound to get stuck in traffic or dirve slowly for some miles due to the state of the roads, removing the themostat will do no harm, worst state senario is you'll have high fuel consumption if the engine runs cold for a few miles.

I hve run cars without thermostats in the Uk and its never caused engine failure.


Regarding antifreez or coolant - its important to use coolant because they have a special formula which prevents the mixture from boling at the normal boiling point of water which is 100 degrees centigrade, and also they often have rust inhibitors which reduce rust. If you put water on its own basically the water will start to boil more quickly also water on its own promotes rust.

If possible use a mixture of summer coolant and distilled water in a 50-50 mixture.

Get rid of the vehicle's air conditioner along with its associated radiator, which restricts the flow of air through the main engine radiator enough to cause over-heating in tropical climates.

Better to sweat in a cool-running car than to temporarily enjoy the air-conditioner in a car whose engine slowly self-destructs from over-heating before finally leaving you stranded someplace on a hot day.

Things to check,


• Insufficient engine coolant or water in the radiator unit
• Leakage along the water hoses line or radiator unit
• Faulty electrical cooling fan
• Alternator not charging
• Faulty radiator cap, loses water on acceleration
• Loose or broken water pump belt
• Faulty thermostat
• Faulty cooling fan relay
• Broken fan fuse
• Blocked radiator fins (insufficient air flow),needs flushing
• Leaking or damaged water pump



gotten from www.1000carsales.com

many things could be wrong, one thing though your ac being on increases the risk of overheating, if it starts overheating the solution is putting it on heater,(i know it sounds dumb) but it removes the heat from the engine to the interior, just roll down the windows.

BlackHawk:

Hi,
You do NOT want to leave the thermostat out of the engine. The purpose of the thermostat is to cause the engine to come up to proper operating temperature quickly. It is damaging for an engine to run cold.
Coolant added too water, helps lubricate the water pump and also prevents corrosion inside the engine. Overheating can have many causes, fan belt not tight enough, block radiator, thermostat, head gasket( will see bubbles in coolant when that happens) plus many others.
Regards

Keep in mind that e-specs (european specification) are designed to run cool and not warm as american cars are designed to.  That's why they sound quieter and tend to endure than their american sibling. I remember my parents having to put in bigger radiators on the second Mercedes that was bought directly from Germany. The factory radiator wasn't suitable for the tropical climate. Same applied to the suspension system. It had to be changed to the conventional one.  For a Honda to go through what he is going through, something major is wrong with it.  What he is experiencing is nothing new to european cars most especially BMW's and some high performance cars.  GM vehicles is just another topic on it's own.  Except he's been running his Honda with Dex Cool.  I don't know the model of Honda he is talking about and I am pretty sure it isn't an a-spec model.

@Digiman

<sup>In response to some of the answers other have given I need to clarify a few of them

1. Blown head gasket - A sure sign of a blown head gasket is the color of your coolant, when you open the expansion tank you'll see a mixture of oil and water in most cases also you'll notice that the car does not pull very well, it will lack power and also your engine will reach hogh temperatures very quickly 5-10 minutes.
You can also get a compression test done, this will surely tell you if your gasket is blown.</sup>

A brown colour is a sign of a radiator that has oil mixed into it. It also a result of mixing coolants. If your car is a bit louder than what it usually sounded and acceleration or driving is hard, then you have a leaking exhaust manifold (could also be a leaking intake manifold). A huge chunk of the heat generated in the engine bay is not from the engine alone but the exhaust manifold and tubes. This is also particular with turbocharged engines. In the case of a car with a blown head gasket, it doesn't affect your performance till the engine gets extremely hot. Heat robs any car off torque. This is why you experience sluggish performance when you want to take off immediately after heavy traffic. It's called heat sink. One of my cars heats up to operating temperature within 5 minutes at idle. It doesn't have a gasket issue.

When the head gasket is no longer sealing as it is supposed to you  may get less compression in your cylinders, you get oil leaking into your water path ways  which results in both mixing giving you a brownish / milky substance,  you can also confirm this by  checking your oil filler cap, you'll see a milkish deposit on it.

When you have a a leaking gasket you will be down on power and it will be noticeable  BEFORE the engine reaches operating temp.

By "heat sink" I suspect you meant "heat soak",  that is mostly true with turbo charged cars, the reason why they heat up so quickly is because the exhaust gases are used to keep the turbo spinning, the turbo in turn forces cool air into the engine via the intake manifold . Because it is so hot in the engine bay of a turbo charged car there is a tendency for the air  being drawn into the  engine to be warmer thus producing less power when combustion occours plus you'll get less air in to the combustion chambers if its warm pre combustion, to get round this turbocharged cars have intercoolers which lower the temp of the incoming air but then their proximity to heat sources such as exhaust manifold e.t.c in the engine bay lends them to heat soak.

There are ways of getting round thisbut I wil not be discussing them here.


I know all this becasue I have owned and done a lot of work on turbo charged cars as a hobby for the last 10 years.

Ivvie:

@Digiman

<sup>In response to some of the answers other have given I need to clarify a few of them

1. Blown head gasket - A sure sign of a blown head gasket is the color of your coolant, when you open the expansion tank you'll see a mixture of oil and water in most cases also you'll notice that the car does not pull very well, it will lack power and also your engine will reach hogh temperatures very quickly 5-10 minutes.
You can also get a compression test done, this will surely tell you if your gasket is blown.</sup>

A brown colour is a sign of a radiator that has oil mixed into it. It also a result of mixing coolants. If your car is a bit louder than what it usually sounded and acceleration or driving is hard, then you have a leaking exhaust manifold (could also be a leaking intake manifold). A huge chunk of the heat generated in the engine bay is not from the engine alone but the exhaust manifold and tubes. This is also particular with turbocharged engines. In the case of a car with a blown head gasket, it doesn't affect your performance till the engine gets extremely hot. Heat robs any car off torque. This is why you experience sluggish performance when you want to take off immediately after heavy traffic. It's called heat sink. One of my cars heats up to operating temperature within 5 minutes at idle. It doesn't have a gasket issue.

Digiman:

When the head gasket is no longer sealing as it is supposed to you may get less compression in your cylinders, you get oil leaking into your water path ways which results in both mixing giving you a brownish / milky substance, you can also confirm this by checking your oil filler cap, you'll see a milkish deposit on it.

When you have a a leaking gasket you will be down on power and it will be noticeable BEFORE the engine reaches operating temp.

By "heat sink" I suspect you meant "heat soak", that is mostly true with turbo charged cars, the reason why they heat up so quickly is because the exhaust gases are used to keep the turbo spinning, the turbo in turn forces cool air into the engine via the intake manifold . Because it is so hot in the engine bay of a turbo charged car there is a tendency for the air being drawn into the engine to be warmer thus producing less power when combustion occours plus you'll get less air in to the combustion chambers if its warm pre combustion, to get round this turbocharged cars have intercoolers which lower the temp of the incoming air but then their proximity to heat sources such as exhaust manifold e.t.c in the engine bay lends them to heat soak.

There are ways of getting round thisbut I wil not be discussing them here.


I know all this becasue I have owned and done a lot of work on turbo charged cars as a hobby for the last 10 years.

I know the ways around heat sink. Heat sink is what is referred to the overwhelming reaction of the engine to heat as it robs the engine off torque. I did 90 hours of engine mechanism, installation and rebuild and another 90 in engine system management. And this is combined with Mechanical Engineering. I am not denying what you are saying nor am I limiting to the situations listed. The brownish colour or milk-shake colour too can be gotten when you have coolants of different composition together. I also agree with the compression principle. I'm thinking narrowly because Honda's are low end NA engines. The higher production models are built to give you performance at low rpm and don't hold up or give performance at high rpm unlike Mercedes and Porshe. Throughout the life of a Honda vehicle, it shouldn't have head leaks, warpages or problems associated with extreme heat due to time. They are basic cars with basic engines.

Ivvie , no problem you know your stuff as well. Are you an automotive engineer/designer ?, where are you based ?

I'm studying mechanical engineering.  That is mechanical engineering with design and multiphysics as the focus.  I was biased towards automotive till I switched states and found out that you are taught the way americans designed vehicles in school.  It dawned on me that one can spend four and a half years learning to build a vehicle like Ford and end up an unreliable and undependable piece of sheet metal.  I had european professors for my first few years of college.  When I relocated to Texas, I had American teachers and Ford/GM cars were all that they made references to.  Believe me, they taught two different things.   I am an active member in the society of automotive engineers (SAE) and I put a lot of emphases towards structural design, vehicle dynamics, mechanical vibration and machine design.  

I am not an expert to this.  I'm just theoretical.  I simulate.  My professional experience is within the 180 hours of which some hands-on were done.  My college classes have to do with a lot of differentiations, calculating failure rates e.t.c.  You have 10 years of practical field  I bet you can listen to a car and tell all that is wrong with it or tell that electrolysis is beginning to take place by looking at the coolant.

Ivie, am just very curious when u said Hondas are low end NA engine. Wot does dat mean? Am a total novice.

They don't hold up at high or top speeds.  You get performance at low rpms and torque at high rpm is dissappointing plus they are basic engines.  You can't have both.  You either have performance at low RPM and folly at upper or no performance at low RPM's and performance at higher range RPM's.  Some cars compensate for this by means of a bi-turbo charger.  I'm yet to find someone doing a spirited-driving with an Accord.  The suspension set up wouldn't even permit that.

NA means Natural Aspirated, some call it Naturally Aspirated or Normally Aspirated engines.  In other words, no mechanical or electric driven supercharger.

It's more like saying it's a soft engine.   You don't get performances off those kind of engines.  They may engineer them (e.g v6's) to seem like so, but the reality is it isn't.  It doesn't matter how you hot-rod them, they would just be toys moving around.  They are economy cars designed to be as low-cost maintainance as possible.  It's hard for me to word it all out but I know what I am referring to. 


Somebody could help me out here.  Some people in America term it as a car to get you from A to B.  It's the same with all Nissans (except the Skylines), Hondas, Toyota's (not excluding the Lexus) and many more.  Real cars would be european. 

You also don't see japanese automakers come up with ground-breaking technologies (not referring to innovations).   You don't see any of those cars in a La Mans race.

I don't know if it's true, but I heard some BMW's don't hold up speed at upper RPM's as the E Class does.  But it's known to offer a full burst of power at WOT (wide open throttle).

Ivie I have got to respond to your suggestion that BMW's are somehow inferior to the Mercedes E Class. Having driven a 1992 BMW 535i with a manual 5 speed gearbox under enough road conditions and speeds to form a solid opinion, I must say that it would take a suicidally determined driver in any model Mercedes to keep up with me if I were serious about going felony fast behind the wheel of the year, make and model BMW I have just mentioned.

I know we are digressing a little from the topic of engine overheating problems here, but BMW have over the years produced quite a few models that are high-performance road-missiles by any yardstick, and which would give any model Mercedes a run for its money any day, at any speed, and under any road/ weather conditions.

@Jakumo


I did not say BMW's offered no performance. What I said was that they don't hold up as as well as a Mercedes would. I own an E Class and I know what it does when you are over 130MPH for 45 minutes and that's because that is what my tires can handle. Most cars don't get there although the speedometer says so. And guess what, I can still pick up speed and I'm not stressing the engine. That is still nothing to the engine. There is no surge and the best part of the whole thing is that you still get the road courtesy/manners off the Mercedes. I think the governed maximum is 155. A lot of cars would begin vibrating after an extended period over 130. My colleague at work had either piston or a major engine component eject out of his corvette/camaro (whichever). The engine was rebuilt but never ran the same. Ford's are known to spit plugs out during regular high speed driving.

For a BMW, as I said, I cannot vouch for it. I don't own one, neither did my parents. But from my interactions with people that are into spirited-driving, that was what my conclusion was. 535's are just new to the market. It's been the 530i's. Euro market might be different.

In terms of your BMW WOTing, it's cool. I'm not a fan because it's biased towards sport and sport-biased cars are built for close maintenance plus, it floods here in Texas.

Your condition for a race under any road condition - BMW's roof and pillar structures more or less can't hold the weight of the vehicle in rollovers.

I'll take your word about the high-end capabilities of an E class Merc, Ivie, as I probably would lose my driving license if I were to drive for any length of time so far in excess of the US 65mph speed limit, but suffice to say it would be a very close finish if your wheels got pitted against mine on the German autobahn where there would be no smoky worries.

Regarding the 535i engine, that powerplant is arguably the most reliable engine ever produced by BMW, and it is not for nothing that 3.5 liter straight 6 motor has earned the name "bullet proof" over the years since its introduction into the line.    Coupled to a manual 5 Speed gearbox in the E34 body-style Bimmer, and you are talking about a match made in heaven.  Gotta love German engineering, whether it is a Merc or a Bimmer.

What spec of BMW's do you have? Upper A-Spec BMW's don't come fitted with a manual transmission. In my obseration, the 2007 or late 2006 BMW's are 2.8, 3.5 size engines. Some of the 90's BMW's had a serious flaw in some of their engines. The 5 series short block engines tends to react with sulphur which resorts to corrosion. Besides that, E34 has engine block issues. In other words, it isn't bullet proof.

I won't doubt your words concerning racing on a runway or an open freeway. For some reason, I dont fancy BMW's. I don't know much about BMW's too.

The E34 classification of BMW's is in reference to the body shape that was produced for the 5 Series BMW between the years of 1988 and 1995.  A variety of engines were available for this body style, and most of them were underpowered  and/or problematic designs, with the notable exception of the 3.5 liter straight 6 engine designated the M30 motor, which was available between the years of 1988 and 1992 only.

Among BMW purists, the holy grail of the E34 stable is the combination of that M30 straight 6-cylinder, 3.5 liter engine coupled to a MANUAL 5 speed gearbox, since the auto tranny was saddled with a reputation for generating comparatively weaker acceleration than the manual 5 speed.    Many are the M30 BMW engines that have clocked over 200,000 miles and still run smooth as silk with no problems whatsoever. That same M30 motor also powered some models in the BMW 7 series lineup in a production run that was far longer in duration than that of any other BMW motor till date.  Clearly a case of "if it works, don't fix it" guiding the corporate philosophy there.

The engine block issues to which you refer would be the fuel residue corrosion problem that afflicted the M60 V8 engine which came in E34 BMWs from 1992 to 1996, and was traced to the engineering design flaw of BMW using a nickel alloy to forge the engine block, a problem that was later resolved by replacing that alloy with an aluminum based one.   From a longevity standpoint the BMW M60 V8, though more powerful than the six cylinder, was never a match for the gold  standard 3.5 liter M30 straight 6 motor.  Similarly, all other engines made for the E34 BMW 5-series cars paled in comparison to the legendary M30 straight 6 engine in most regards, and some of the more comical offerings like the lawn-mower sized 1.8 liter and 2.0 liter engines are best relegated to the scrap-heap of automotive history.

To digress a little further, Jakumo & Ivvie, I have a question for you guy's, what do you consider to more important in a perfomance car, is it handling, is it power (BHP) or top speed ?

I'd rate handling as the most important consideration, with the horse-power numbers and top speed less crucial.

Jakumo:

I'd rate handling as the most important consideration, with the horse-power numbers and top speed less crucial.

Correct answer !, power without control is useless. Most mass produced cars nowadays tend to try to make a compromise, they are designed to be affordable to run and maintain, the engines and body work are built to last say 5-10 years, performance is not that good because they try to reduce fuel consumption and emissions, the handling side of things is another compromise , its assumed they car will not be driven in a sporty manner hance they designed for day to day normal road handling.

The reason why I asked the question is because reading your MERC vs BMW argument I realised that they are both autobahn cruisers, only good for top speed in a straight line but not handling plus I doubt if their 0-60 acceleration times is anything to write home about.

Admittedly BMW, Mercedes, VW do make solid are reliable cars but its only in the last 10 or so years that they seem to be improving the handling of their low end cars like the E-Class and BMW 535i but even then both cars are too heavy and big with lots of over hang at the front and rear, most of the power output is used to keep them moving, these make the handling terrible and rob both cars of power.

Sounds like a Porche 911 or Boxter would be your ideal set of wheels, Digiman. That sort of precision machinery comes with the type of price tag that sends mere mortals like yours truly back behind the wheel of modest "gentleman C" jalopies like that 17 year-old Bimmer I've grown so fond of.

There are a few cars which you do not need to rob a bank or sell your wife and kids in order to own one,
like the new Mini Cooper S, unfortunately its only 2 doors, then there is the Audi A3 or the Subaru Impreza (But Ugly !!!).
I have a Lancia Delta http://www.supercarworld.com/cgi-bin/showgeneral.cgi?171, Execellet handling, 4WD, mad acceleration plus it has 4 doors.
Ultimately i'd like to own a Porcher 4S http://www.porsche.com/uk/models/911/911-carrera-4s/