1994 Saturn L1

Both fans work if it has two? Does it overheat driving or when idling?

We had a '94 SL1 also. after a squirrel knocked the front air dam off completely, I experienced some running hot. (never to the point of overheat. ) I drilled some new holes in it, and reinstalled with a half dozen zip ties and the thing cooled back down. Make sure the front air dam is in place as there is no other path for the air to that radiator.

as mentioned in the other replies, make sure the fan(s) are coming on also. Although you shouldn't need them over 30 mph.

when our '97 started overheating, it turned out to be a weak fan motor, which cascaded to a cracked radiator and since I was in there I replaced the pump as well...

when the fan got weak, it would start slow and spin slow, so much so, I could stop it with a twig. it would try to run stronger when the a/cc was on, but it was still pretty pitiful. our gauge was off, it never read over heating, but the radiator ended up cracking at the transmission line, unfortunately, that when we realized there was a problem.

Son tried a new thermostate in it, and he thought it ran to hot, but he had a 195 degree thermostate in it, so took it out and it is fine now. Will need to put back in this winter for heat though. Thanks for all your replies. Carol

"dnysis" wrote in message news:Zlzmi.8036$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...

should be a 192-195 degree thermostat, operating temp will run anywhere from

195 to 210 degrees. Running less than that the computer will read the engine as being cold, and never take it out of open loop, which is the equivalent of driving around with the choke on., and the car will fail emissions test that way because she will be running to rich. the thermostate does more than regulate tempature it acts as a restrictor to slow the water flow at higer engine rpms down enough that the radiator can actually transfer the heat fro the water to the air. You never ever cool anything down. In air conditioning the latent rule of heat states an object gives up its heat trying to warm up a cooler object. Its the basic theroy of heating, cooling an engine and air conditioning to name a few. also there is the The days of shade tree knuckle busters being able to get away with pulling a thermostate are over, and have been since about 50's.So the gasoline exploding in your cylinder creates heat that moves the the metal in the engine. The metal in the engine attempts to heat the water in the cooling system which attempts to heat up the metal in the radiator which attempts to heat up the air flowing through it. But if the coolant moves to fast through the system it cant shed its heat, so operating tempature climbs.

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