Temperature

It's suddenly a lot warmer in Chicago (31 shootings over the weekend). I was driving my 2000 Focus Friday night in a what would be considered a pretty bad neighorhood to go to a co-workers family members wake when the Focus temperature went nearly into the red (it stayed within the white but was right on the line. Always watching the gauges, I had already turned on the heat on full blast as I noticed it get hotter. Of course, I also had my windows rolled up because of the area I was in to avoid any troubles (the radio was already covering a number of shootings by that time of night)...

Sticky thermostat? Mis behaving fan switch?

It didn't happen Saturday or Sunday, just when it would have been the worst possible moment...

Due to the car troubles, I skipped the drive thru and went inside to let the car cool a while (i've never been to a place with a drive thru before);

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Reply to
Chicago Paddling-Fishing
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A drive-through wake? Interesting. :)

Reply to
Blinky the Shark

Do you know if the cooling fan switched on?

if you need to cool the engine, switching the AC on may be the better idea, it would kick the AC fan on which should also pull air through the radiator.

Reply to
underdog

Yep, (did you read the article I posted?) I thought it sounded interesting as well. I figured something like that would be in California for sure (don't they have drive in churches?) , but Chicago??

The car hasn't acted up again, but I've been driving close to home the last few days where it knows failing wouldn't cause me pain...

Reply to
Chicago Paddling-Fishing

Assuming you've already checked the fuses, a common problem is the resistor assembly for the low speed of the cooling fan. Also inspect the wire harness for burned contacts/sockets.

Idle the car and let it start to overheat. The cooling fan should kick in at low speed a notch after the middle of the temperature gauge. If the low speed fails and temperature continues to rise, the high speed will kick in at about the red marker. The low speed is always high speed when the a/c is on, so if the fan starts with the a/c on and doesn't with the a/c off, it's the resistor.

-Stanjo

Reply to
Stanjo

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