> > I have a 94 Acclaim that wouldn't hardly warm up. A friend said I
> > needed a thermostat, so I replaced it. I am pretty sure that I put it
> > in the correct way. I put it in the same way the other was in.
> > Anyway, since then it has had a couple of intermittent periods of
> > overheating. The following day we took it out and it got really hot so I
> > pulled over and opened the hood. The engine was really hot but the radiator
> > and upper hose felt cold.
>
> Sounds as if you failed to bleed the air out of the cooling system after
> replacing the thermostat. That's what the screw-in fitting atop the water
> box (where the thermostat goes) is for.
>
> > I opened the radiator cap and some coolant shot out.
>
> NEVER do this; you can be very badly burned.
>
> It's good to drill a 1/8" hole in the thermostat flange *just* outboard of
> the valve poppet, and when you install the thermostat put this hole at the
> 12:00 (top) position; this helps move air forward and evacuate it. But for >
>The screw plug is often frozen in
> place, so a decent alternative procedure is to put the car with the nose
> on as sharp an upward angle as possible, loosen the radiator cap and run
> the engine at a fast idle until it reaches full operating temperature and
> for about 10 minutes thereafter.
Hmmm.... loosen the coolant temp sensor at the thermostat housing while filling the radiator, the air will get pushed out to the thermostat level and the thermostat will open without all that incline crap. This is not an any shop manual therefore you would have to work on these cars to be able to see what is going on!!
The other possibility is that your engine requires a head gasket. These
> engines aren't as prone to head gasket failures as the early 2.0/2.4, but
> they do tend to need a gasket if they begin heating up like this.