Well, I've been using this site for the past year and it has helped answer any question i have had so far, but after searching through the forum for this issue i could not find anything that pertains to my situation. My car started to run hot after going on a hard drive with some friends. When i noticed it i slowed down and the car cooled off. I assumed this was because i had deleted my air pump and the aftermarket pulleys were starting to slip on the belt. I looked into it and bought pineapple racing's idler pulley kit. This didn't resolve it so i put my original pulleys back on (not the air pump) to see if the alluminum pulley had worn down too much and was slipping too bad. Didn't solve it. It ran cooler than with the aftermarket pulleys, but still to hot to consider driving more than 2 miles from my garage. I'm going to replace the thermostat and the waterpump because i noticed a slight bushing wobble, very minimal, and I'm thinking that the thermostat not opening all the way could be causing flow restristion. Any ideas on what might be causing it or am i heading in the right direction?

 

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generation-specific-1993-2002-16/big-fat-fd3s-cooling-thread-571088/

 

Thanks for the link. I don't know how I've never seen it before. Guess I'm not using the right words when searching. It helped me understand the cooling system better.

Anyone else have any input?

 

here is what i just recently had in my car....

i have a t2 with a fully build motor and a holeset hx52 turbo...even without any boost i would run 210+ degrees and at an idle it would goto 195+ degrees....

i replaced the thermostat with a 170 degree (only one they had...else i would have gotten 180 degree)

bought a bottle of redline water wetter

and i flushed my radiator then flushed my engine out...lots of brown gunk and crap came out....after that i closed everything up and dumped in the water wetter and distilled water...

now my temps are 160-170 at idle and 180 avg with 195 in heavily "spirited" driving...water wetter ftw

 

Yeah, I'm going to have a higher water/antifreeze mixture after I put in my new waterpump and thermostat. I was actually thinking about my water/antifreeze mixture before you posted thinking that it helped in my car running hotter than normal because i'm running closer to 50/50 or even higher antifreeze to water ratio (coolant leaked out once and all i had was antifreeze 50/50, then after boiling some out, all i had was pure antifreeze). I just didn't think it would affect temperatures that much. Makes sense though.

 

it affects it my as much as 20 degrees actually...throw in 70% water, bottle of water wetter, then antifreeze filled...thats all you would need really....i run 100% water with water wetter

 

Got the car running like when i bought it. Replaced thermostat, water pump, and radiator hoses. I probably could've gotten away with just a thermostat but there was a little wobble in water pump so... Now to do some reading on why the hell the tach is deciding to tell me wrong rpm readings. thanks for the help with the first problem everyone.