The temp gauge isn't 100% accurate, but is there to give you a good idea of what is going on with your cooling system. So it may be possible that that gague isn't properly calibrated, and you're not letting the car warm up enough to catch. So this is one possibility. You may wish to let the car heat up to 220°F, and shut the car off if the needle begins to go past the 220 mark. Right around there is when my fans typicly turn on. ->Side note: water cut with antifreeze raises the boiling point of water, and the coolant being isolated in a sealed system that restricts it's expansion, will increase it's boiling point temp even further. So 220°F is a safe operating temp for a car. Take notice that to avoid this kind of customer concern, auto manufacturers no longer put numbers on their temp gagues, just designations between "Hot" and "Cold". Looking at your VIN #, and somewhat from your description, it sounds as though you've got the later style pipe assembly, where the otterstat is insterted into a hole on the bottom of the pipe. So air bubbles collecting around the otterstat shouldn't be a problem here. However, you did write that you have both bled the system manually, and that you now have a self bleeder installed. In either case, it still sounds to me as though you've still not bled the car entirely. Manually bleeding is a time consuming task. To do it properly, you've got to disconnect the hoses on the front, to bleed out the air in the front part of the system. Doing this entirely thru the bleeder screw on the back can take upwards of an hour. Plus, you're not just bleeding out air. As you bleed off air, you're also bleeding out coolant. And the problem with this is that when the level gets too low, cooling efficiency is dropped, and what little air is in the system will become scattered, and you'll end up with vaptor lock. When bleeding with this method, you can only take so much coolant out at a time, and then you must pause, and wait for the car to cool, and then refill the drained coolant back into the surge tank. Any time that you bleed off too much coolant and cause this senario, you've got to start over from the very begining! Passive bleeding with the bleeder kit is much easier, but you really need to pressurize the system to evacuate everything. And you'd need to do this by driving the car. Heat the system up, drive it, and see how stable it becomes. Park, and let cool down, then crack open the surge tank to vent any excess air, and to top off the coolant, if nessisary. And while it may run warm at first, it should quickly run cooler as you heat & cool the system. Don't bother draining your cooling system to start over from "scratch". It's not as though the water has "failed", and needs to be replaced. But, since you're already this involved in the cooling system, it really wouldn't hurt for you to perform a pressure test next time you've got it filled up. -Robert vin 6585 "X" --- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Jim Hodgson <jhodgson11@xxxx> wrote: > Dave, > > The guage will get as high as 220 if I let it. I would shut it down at that point for fear of overheating it. To address comments privately to the moderating team, please address: moderators@xxxxxxxxxxx For more info on the list, tech articles, cars for sale see www.dmcnews.com To search the archives or view files, log in at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dmcnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: dmcnews-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/