Rep Power: 812

My engine bay gets so hot that performance is getting affected. Everything is alot hotter now, especially the engine coolant. I think it's the motor running hot and messing up everything else. My throttle body is burning hot from the coolant going through it, and the header is heating up the entire bay cause there's no shield.

Now is there a way to mod the stock header shield and put that on somehow?

What about the coolant bypass mod from the TB? There is a sensor there for idle control, so I'm wondering what would happen if it's not seeing coolant. My TB right now is as hot as the coolant. Can't even touch it. Any help is appreciated.

 
Rep Power: 0

Well, here are some suggestions.

* Check to make sure the radiator fan is working properly.
* Get a bigger heavy-duty radiator if you live in a warm climate.
* Check for a partially plugged radiator. When the engine overheated sludge or debris may have been dislodged and plugged the radiator.
* If you have a blown head-gasket it would allow exhaust to get into the cooling system, which in turn would fool the thermo-switch.

This is all I can think of now.

 
Rep Power: 812

Thanks. The radiator does have bugs and dents in it from all those trips. The heater gets so hot it can burn my hard, and maybe cook food! I hope it's not the gasket. The thing is, the car performs well for maybe 5 mins after warming up, then starts to gradually lose performance and get sluggish. So I have a feeling it's something with the radiator not being good enough or a thermostat problem (doubtful tho).

 
Rep Power: 608

hmmm..........mine doesn't even get that hot with boost.

possible thermostat or maybe the HG from when the DH head was swapped. You said that your head was milled.....maybe the head is warped

 
Rep Power: 812

Na head is good. We checked everything and the install was very smooth. Does higher compression = more heat? I'm thinking this is why...but I'm worried something bad might happen. It does so well when the temp goes down to 60F some nights.

 
Rep Power: 362

THE reason why your car performs so well at nights and so shitty in the day is because of heat soak. There are literally maybe 100 threads about it on clubrsx and even dyno's comparing sri's to cai's.

I've read a few heat soak threads and they actually did tests where they would drive around like normal city driving and engine bay temps would get around 100-120F ... and to think your stock/sri intake is sucking in that air. I didn't think cai's were a big deal until I read a lot of the information about heat soaking

bugged up and dented radiator doesn't matter ... my radiator is like that and I'm not even running any fans (fans broke)

tb bypass would help you if you don't run into freezing whether ... otherwise it may freeze shut

engine bay itself shouldn't get much hotter with a blown headgasket ... but your temp gauge will rise up to H if it does

 
Rep Power: 362

yes, reading back, my post will help out with power issues, but not cooling issues ...

what did you do to your head? ... you got pnp and milled? ... I think higher compression will make it a little hotter, but not extremely hot ... for example, k20a2/s2k motors have very high compression, but they probably don't get as hot as you described

is your temp gauge rising a lot? ... if so, then you probably have a blown head gasket. perhaps your head is warped and it causes leaks in your headgasket .. or your head wasn't torqued correctly?

you know, I had a similar problem with my turbo. I blew the headgasket and the engine bay was always very hot, but my temp gauge never rose until much later. I found that my starting acceleration bogged a lot and on warm days, acceleration sucked ... I took the turbo off and it was still like that, only worse. then, I got my head gasket replaced and immediately I gained much more throttle response ... probably because the exhaust gases don't escape into the combustion chambers anymore

 
Rep Power: 812

Thanks everyone! I bet the header is causing alot too. It's super hot around that area. Might try the tb bypass.

Head is milled alot, about 1mm I think. It seemed like the bolts went on okay without bottoming out. The temp needle doesn't move up, but then again it's not very good anyway.

When the weather got down to 50F a few nights ago, the car felt like it gained 10whp and lots of throttle response. On hot days, it feels like a beat up geo metro