Problem.....Can someone help please?
 

Ok so the day before last the temperature of my car was fine...even when I floored it on the highway and the such....But yesterday my car didnt overheat but it went from its usual 1/8" over the C to halfway.....same thing happened today....I didnt let the car get any hotter than that on either day....I think and Im hoping that it was the temperature here in Central Florida yesterday which was at a high of 94 degrees plus all that damn humidity that Fl has which makes it feel like 100+ degrees....it wasnt cloudy....and today's weather was the same. So my question is....this is especially referring to the people that live in the Southern states and are enduring the heat. Is this a normal thing or have I fucked up anything in the engine?

PS: the thermostat is like 2-4 months old....and its a mazda OEM one I bought from Mazdatrix.

1/2 gaige ain't bad, start freaking if she hits 3/4 :)

Oh ok....I was freaking because it always ran 1/8 over C even when I had the pedal to the ground in all gears on the interstate for like 2-3 miles.....and yesterday and today....it heated up to 1/2 when I would shift under 3k in 1,2,3,4 and shifted at 3.5k to 5th gear....so it got me real worried...

Is this all or does someone else have any input about what it could be or a tip on what I can do under these hot temperatures....

Try Water wetter if you are that worried about it.

Keep in mind these stock gauges are really unreliable. Do what I did, get a seperate temp gauge so you'll know exactly the temps and when.

Water Wetter....whats that? and mwpayne...I'll keep that in mind.....Thanks alot

put some water on it

Redline makes a product called Water Wetter. I think a lot of places cary it. Autozone and advance Autopart in NC both do... I just added some, I can't really tell if it has made a difference. If I had a aftermarket guage I would suspect that the difference might be 10-20 degree F cooler now, but the stock gauage does nto register that (or at least it is hard to detect that small a change...

BTW, my car ran in the 1/4 range for a long time, now it is in the 1/2 range. I have done some mods and things. I don't worry too much as I don't trust the stock gauge. if it was over 3/4 I think it would bother me though :)

I could be wrong, but if you had a real cooling problem it would not stop at 1/2, it would keep creeping up and up... the fact that it magically went from 1/4 to 1/2 is more likely due to a bad gauge.

You might try cleaning the plug and making sure it has good contacts..

you can do what one of my friends did he put concen trated racing antifrease in his saturn and the neatel whent up 1/20 th of the way but that was most likely bad for the car but heat wise my vert runs 1/4 to 1/3 on the heat scale just depends on what the weather is like

~SIMPLE....radiator is probably clogged if everything else is working fine. Be surprised buddy. Temp should not be 1/2 way mark, it is NOT okay. I'm almost certain your rad is partially clogged and that is speaking from a similiar experience.
Start looking at a new rad, because they are hard to rod out depending on the severity.

When your car is warmed up feel both ends of the radiator to see if they are evenly heated to check for a clog somewhere. You can also do a coolant system flush if you havent already. You can also have the coolant system pressure tested to find the leak.

Hmm.....ok its not fine because this morning at 7am...(it was probably in the 70-80s the car heated u to 1/2 again and the cap of the OFT(Over Flow Tank) started to come off which caused major steam smoke coming from hood....so I think something is really wrong....I think it could be the Rad. Cap and/or what RX-7Havik said...the radiator might be clogged....I will have to check all these out...Thanks everyone for the info.

dude im in texas its 100 deg thats not including the humidity factor my 90 gxl runs 1/2 always dont worry about it i dog the shit out of my car it never gets higher

ok well.....does you car everytime you stop driving have steam coming out of the OFT? Alot of it....and the the water that was in there is gone also....so yea I think my car is overheating not alot but enuff...

Same here. Though NC is a little cooler that 100 :)

yeah i'm also having problems with my car overheating. last night i went out onto a baseball field and was doing some doughnuts and just playing around. i got off the field after running a home run and drove my friend back to his house. it was a little chilly so the heat was on low and after like two minutes my feet were burning hot. i looked at the temp gauge to see that it was right below the top line. i turned the car off and waited fifteen minutes for the engine to cool down and drove back to my house. when i got on the highway the temp went down a little bit and jumped right back up when i got back to normal speeds. this morning it did the same thing. is there a hose or something that could have popped out or did i just run really really low on coolant. i have no idea what happened because it was fine one minute and the next my engine was running way too hot. please advice.

The baseball gods are not very happy with you for tearing up their basepaths, lol...

You do know how to check your coolant levels once she cools down, right?

And you know where the heater hoses are, to check for ruptures, right?

yeah, i'm 20 and have little experience with cars but i know the basics well enough. the hoses were replaced 5k miles ago by previous owner but i'm not sure about the coolant. i checked the overflow tank when the car was cold and when it was running, and it was completely dry so i figured my car might be low on coolant. i added some today but only got about two ounces in before the hose filled up. i figured the next thing to do was to replace the thermostat so i just got on in today at work and will put it on my car in the next couple of hours. if that doesnt fix the problem do you have any other suggestions. thanks for the feedback.

from what i've read, S4s normally read about 1/4 on the temp gauge whereas S5s read about half.
also, if i remember right, water has better cooling than anti-freeze whereas anti-freeze has a lower freezing temp. too much coolant can be a bad thing. i remember someone overheated in a 3rd gen (just mildly) while at a track because the previous owner had completely filled the radiator with coolant. make sure youve got some water in there.
if you do want to buy a radiator, i have a stock one for sale that seems to be in good condition. i replaced it with Koyo, but it never gave me any problems. i almost regret replacing it. =/