Yep, its been about half a year since those repairs and this issue popping up. The front end damage did include a cracked radiator support which was replaced. However, the shop did double check the whole cooling system and said that everything was in working order.

 

before you throw a thermostat into your car make sure you check everything out yourself. its not hard to check if your thermostat comes on or not. i doubt its the thermostat because you stated when you drive and speed up the temp gauge needle goes down. start the car and watch it warm up to operating temp until the fans come on. its probably going to take 10-15minutes out of your life to see if the cooling fans come on.
and since you now provided new info to the fact the vehicle has had front end collision repair i suspect this may be the cooling fans not coming on. wires may be frayed or possibly pinched somewhere.

 

I know this is way late, but I just wanted to let you guys know that I found a solution to the problem. The overheating had nothing to do with the radiator or cooling fans. The thermostat came loose and was hanging close to the test pipes giving it false temperature readings. My car was not overheating the senor just picked it up that way. I drilled a slot in the radiator cover and made a spot for it there. Tbh, idk where the thermostat originally was. But now I have no false overheating issues

 

Ok the thermostat is internal and needs the flow of hot coolant to make it operate. So whatever it is you have there, it isn't the thermostat. If it's a coolant temp sensor, that means there's an open port somewhere and your cooling system isn't pressurized. Which also doesn't make sense as if there is an open hole, coolant would spew all over the engine bay once it heated up and expanded.

We need pics.

 

Damn then idk what it is. I'm not leaking or spewing coolant. It's a black plastic bar with a sensor on it held on by wires. It was seems to be hooked to something behind the radiator cover. I'll take pictures first thing tomorrow morning and show you. Whatever it is, it was the root of the overheating problem and as soon as I moved it the overheating ceased.

 

are you sure you're not looking at the outside ambient temp sensor? the engine coolant sensor should be on the crossover pipe on the back of the cylinder head. odd that fiddling with whatever you found behind the radiator has now stopped the overheating issue. perhaps you may have a shorted wire somewhere.

 

I have no idea what it is. My temperature always reads +20 degrees higher than normal. The coolant sensor is behind the cylinder head? Then whatever I relocated must be something else. Im gonna snap pics of it in the morning. But yeah its been almost a month and a half now since I relocated this sensor and I have had no cooling issues.

 

Actually I'll just snap them now. It's this black piece of plastic that holds onto the sensor. I forgot bolted it onto the esge of the engine cause it was loose on the radiator cover.

 

That's definitely not the thermostat and whatever it is, does not go there. I don't have that.

Wait a minute, that looks like the outside temp sensor that sits in the front bumper..

 

Edit: yep , that's what that is. Should have no effect on your cooling issue though.

 

That is really strange. If that's the outside temp sensor my buddy must've moved it to make room for the gen3 intakes. But ever since I moved that sensor away from the exhaust my car stopped overheating when idling or in traffic. The coolant sensor is located behind the cylinder head? I want to check it out to make sure its not loose or anything

 

Yeah, put that back in the front grill somewhere, its not imperative but your dash reading for the outside temp is more so reading your under hood temps lol

 

Yep my outside temp sensor is reading 130+ degrees lol. I was wondering what was going on with that. Preciate your input man!

 

I've not looked into it but is there any way in hell the ECU takes ambient into account? Maybe threw off the timing/fuel. I'd think it'd do that with the MAF sensors not something external. Just really illogical that the two would be related.

 

What is ambient? Yeah I don't think they're related either. What I can conclude though is that the car wasn't really overheating cause the cooling fans were still running and the engine was at optimal temp. The sensor just wanted to move the meter up when idling or stopped