I have 96 accord, 166,000 miles, manual tranny, and the temp gauge sticks below the midway mark. The reason I know this is because it used to overheat and blow coolant out the reservoir on long trips and I have no fans right now. Yeah I know I need to get those reaplaced but I would like to figure out the temp gauge b4 I do that.I tested the t-stat and it opend when it was supposed to, I reaplace w/a new Honda one cause I think it was a NAPA pile! bottom hose and top hose both hot. Anyone have any suggestions, short in the wiring, bad temp gauge, bad coolant temp gauge sending unit? Thats all I can think of. Any help would be much apprecited

-CORR04

 

I have a '96 Accord Coupe that I bought recently as a commuter and the temp gauge wasn't working at all when I bought it. It turned out to be the temperature gauge sending unit. I replaced it and the gauge now operates normally, however, my temp gauge never goes any higher than just below midway. If I'm idling at a stoplight on a real hot day it will inch up toward midway a little, but it never makes it all the way to the mid-way line. Before I replaced the sending unit the gauge wouldn't move at all. And yes, I used a Honda brand sending unit for the replacement. I had heard of people having some problems with aftermarket sensors, and the Honda one wasn't but about 20 bucks. Hope this helps... [8D]

 

i'll second the temp sending unit.

I have a 94 and 98 car and neither one goes above 1/3 even on extremely hot days

 

Are you sure it's overheating? Have you measured the coolant temperature?

 

Yes, I am almost 100 positive that it is overheating. I just bought a new temp sending unit today and am going to install it tommorow. Hopefully that will solve the first part of my problem. The next step will be buying some new fans and getting those hooked up correctly, as I have noticed a lot of you have trouble the fans turning on when there supposeed to and with the relays, switches etc.. that seem not work right on older accords.