idle temp

**lifedeerhunter** · 06-04-2015

Ok thanks. It's what a auto guy from a Chevy dealer told me to do. And no I wasnt driving with a bleeder valve open. Jeff that would get anti freeze all over. I drove a 1 hour 15 mins drive on Wednesday and my temp gauge barely moved finally. Sorry for all this. After paying Arm and a leg to fix the lower intake gasket I don't want issues with it. I put alot of money in the car right now because the last owners didn't take good care of it. Like it needed a tune up badly and etc.

**hensleya1** · 06-05-2015

Originally Posted by lifedeerhunter

what temp should the car go when its idling in traffic? mine heats up til the fans kick on. i just had the lower intake gasket changed, the water pump got changed before i bought the car and the radiator doesn't act clogged to me. how can you tell if the radiator is clogged? can it be a EGR valve?

Most w-bodys I've owned, once they're warmed up, like to sit glued at 210-215 degrees in traffic because that's when the fans come on. Drive on the highway long enough and you may get it to drop to about 200, but anything below 195 and the tstat closes and it heats back up.

So your car is fine if you're on a stock tune. I had three Grand Prix's, a Regal, and an Intrigue, and they all had the same damn problem unless tuned.

Unfortunately the same rad that cools the block also cools the tranny oil... and the tranny oil heats up to about the same temperature. For every 20 degrees above 175 you cut the life of your trans fluid in half. Plus most issues with these transmissions (pcs solenoids, etc.) show up only when the trans is hot.

Needless to say the radiators on these cars leave something to be desired. If I can ever find a way to shoehorn an H-body rad into one of these cars, I'm going to do it, because those rads are awesome. Or at least an oversized rad of some sort.

The long term solution for this heat problem on any w-body is a tune. The tune can lower the fan-on temperature, coupled with a 180* tstat, will keep that motor cooler and that trans happy.

**J57ltr** · 06-05-2015

Originally Posted by lifedeerhunter

Ok thanks. It's what a auto guy from a Chevy dealer told me to do. And no I wasnt driving with a bleeder valve open. Jeff that would get anti freeze all over. I drove a 1 hour 15 mins drive on Wednesday and my temp gauge barely moved finally. Sorry for all this. After paying Arm and a leg to fix the lower intake gasket I don't want issues with it. I put alot of money in the car right now because the last owners didn't take good care of it. Like it needed a tune up badly and etc.

I understand it would, but I have to ask. As a service manager I get calls for all types of people so you would be surprised at some of the things I have seen. I went round and round with a guy one day because his system "didn't work", and after about 30 minutes of checks he finally tells me that the panel that supplies power to the device is locked out because they are working on it.

Anyway here are some graphs of what my car does on my drive to and from work.

This one was fairly light traffic, no AC and as I got to the surface street my speeds were stopped and moving at a max of about 20 so you can see and tell when the fan comes on. Temp was in the mid 70's

This one I left an hour early and it was pretty smooth sailing, I was doing about 50 or so on the surface street, several lights spread out over about 7 miles and about 75 on the freeway AC running the whole time Outside temp was in the low 90's. about the last 10 minutes of this graph I turned on the AC to kick the cooling fans on, I was parked so you can see the rise in temp of the IAT.

Jeff

**J57ltr** · 06-05-2015

Today for science I went without AC on the way home to graph the cooling system without using the fans without the PCM telling them to come on. This trip started out with pretty heavy traffic and a decent 50mph run for about 2 miles then more traffic then a run on the freeway and more traffic to the turn off to my house then a 2 mile 45mph cruise to the house.