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how hot does your pre 98 tour run?

Joined
Oct 21, 2003
Messages
213
Location
Prunedale, California
i have a 95 contour zetec and my tempature gauge goes up to the A on normal. should i look into getting a lower tempature thermostat? im planning on driving this car to ca from wa and back.
 
Mine does the same thing and it runs in the 196-210 range. i wouldnt worry about it as it seems to be normal for our cars.
 
Our cars do get hot, but there are a few things you can do about it.

One, flush the coolant and run a chemical cleaner to get rid some, if not all of the rust/gunk. Two, make sure your fan is running, low and high speeds. And three, check out your water pump. This is a final step because my car always run hot before I replaced my WP, afterwards its almost always in the middle of the temp. guage now. And I did do the the other stuff I mentioned too, so it helped until my WP broke.
 
honestly 196-210 is normal for any car. if your really concerned about it and it didnt used to read that high then i would take the steps outlined by KerryKool
 
With my pre98 I installed the lower temperature thermostat. It seemed to make a difference, but that was ~2 years ago so I don't really recall...
 
Mine usually runs between the L in normal to the line before red. I've tried all the normal fixes (ie thermostat, engine temp sensor, coolant flush, water pump, radiator and a new cluster) and it still sits about the same. sometimes on colder days it drops but that's because it's just colder. I think it was just built to run hot.
 
I already said that its not running hot. the temps i see with my scan gauge hooked up are anywhere between 196 and 210 (have hit 218 while sitting idle for about 30min once) those temps are normal for any car. its actually ideal.

and yes mine also runs between the "A" and the "L"
 
I already said that its not running hot. the temps i see with my scan gauge hooked up are anywhere between 196 and 210 (have hit 218 while sitting idle for about 30min once) those temps are normal for any car. its actually ideal.

and yes mine also runs between the "A" and the "L"

Is there a way to adjust the temp gauge to drop it to reflect normality or is it stuck like that perminantly
 
mine runs at the "a" also, never had it above that so far, when you say the ran on high and low speeds, seems to me that my fan will turn on and doesnt change speed, or atleast i dont notice it, is there a test to see if it does?
 
ya my fan only has 2 wires coming from it. One's the hot wire going to the fuse box andthe other goes to ground and it only kicks on 1 speed and it is pretty high. This was a replacement oem part from autozone and the wires going to it were already like that. is this normal.
 
the two wires is normal however there should still be two speeds. the easiest test i know of is too simply turn on the AC, if the fan comes on then the slow speed is working, if not then only the high speed fan works and the resistor for the low speed (located in the bottom drivers side of the fan shroud) probably needs to be replaced.
 
That seems really low. thats only about 120ish according to my scan gauge. the only thing i can think of that would cause such a differance is either the gauge itself or the sending unit.
:shrug:
 
Not really sure, the sending unit is new.. the cluster is out of a mystique.. the car has always ran this cool ever since I've gotten it. Most of the time while driving I'm using defroster, this lowers the temp ALOT (and I mean ALOT) it runs so cool the oil pressure increases around 25-30psi
 
it lowers the temps cause the defrost turns the AC on. the low speed fan comes on with the AC moving more air over the radiator.

why do you always drive with the defrost on? if you drive without the defrost on is the temp up closer to the "A/L"?

my sending unit is from another 'tour and my gauge cluster is also out of a mystique
 
Yea its around M/A mostly, if I sit and idle for a while it will hit in the middle of A/L.. I drive with my defroster on cause its cold here.
 
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