OK, I finnally figured out the problem. For all of your with high temp problems, pay attention. OK, the car was running right into the red on the temp guage, it was starting cold and, as the engine warmed up, the guage would go up smoothly and go into the red. The gauge did not peg, but would stay in the middle of the red and go up a little(say at idle or hard driving) and sometimes drop slightly. So first thing i did was put in a new thermostat, I was hoping it was that simple. It wasn't. Then I realized the fans were not coming on, and they should, the engine was very hot, needle in the red. I upluged the top temp sensor, the one for the fans, and they turned on. I figured that temp sensor must be bad. I bought a new one, the fans still did not turn on, So I unplugged it so the fans would turn on. The temp dropped slowly, but still not out of the red. I decided, maybe if I run a cooler thermostat. I went out and bought a 180 deg. thermostat. It ran a little cooler, now at the beginning of the red, but still in the red. Well I had been hoping it wasn't the water pump the whole time so far, but now it seemed like all signs were pointing to the water pump. It seems like the plastic impellers must have broken off and the water wasn't being circulated enough to keep the engine cool. So Saturday morning I pulled out the water pump. I knew I was screwed when the water pump impellers were intact. I put a new waterpump in anyway, since I already had the old one out. I was talking to my mechanic freind who seemed to think my radiator was clogged. I actually pulled the radiator thinking I was going to change it for a new one. But using the hose, it looked to me like the radiator was flowing just fine. Well we decided at this point to check the accuracy of the guage. We put everything back together and completely flushed the system and put in new antifreeze, no change in the water temp reading. My freind owns a shop so I borrowed his Autodiagnostics OBD-II scanner and this cool little laser temp guage thing(it tells you the temp of whatever you aim it at) Both the Scanner and temp guage kept a reading of around 180 degrees. Damn. I held my foot on the brake and reved the engine to get the car to run hotter, at about 205-210 on the scanner, the temp guage in the car was pegged at this point the cooling fans came on. So it was the f'in guage, or the sending unit. I will be changing the sending unit first one night this week and the guage if that does not fix it. Thanks for reading this post, I just needed to vent, i worked all weekend on this car for nothing
