nah not much difference between the two. I re-read, I saw you were having trouble getting heat in the winter which would be low coolant or an open thermostat, I would say you are drinking/leaking coolant somewhere.

 

Good thinkin about the heat in the winter. I'm just going to monitor it for now and see how it goes over the next couple weeks.

 

not thermostat. air bubbles in the cooling/coolant system or you ect (engine coolant sensor) is starting to act up or maybe has corrosion around the temp sensor itself.

but i would say its air bubbles

 

No heat in the winter or taking a long time for the car to warm up usually means the thermostat is stuck open. I took my thermostat out over the summer to keep the coolant flowing all the time as I was having overheating issues when autocrossing. When I put it back in around October, my car wouldn't be warmed up by the time I got to work and it's a 10 mile drive. Put the thermostat back in (before my head gasket replacement) and my car would be warmed up by the 1st street I got to (1/8th mile).

 

air bubbles big enough to fuck with the ability would heat would also make his cars IAC go up and down like crazy. Also if the ECT was fucked it would code in a 98

 

so whats the verdict on this one?

is it a thermostat, is it just air bubbles? etc

 

Already answered, but I'm pretty sure it was lack of coolant. I put a bottle of water wetter and about a quart of water and it seems to be staying cool. Honestly, I haven't been doing much driving and right now I'm halfway across the country, but I'm pretty sure that solved the problem. I assume that I have a VERY slow leak and will just continue to monitor the situation. If I get back from Las Vegas and find out that it is not fixed, I will keep you guys updated.

Thanks for all the advice and diagnosis.

 

o ok. so it was low on coolant so whenever that empty air spot passes on the ect sensor then you get the driveability problem.

 

yeah, it was strange because evidently there was enough coolant to keep it from pegging above redline. It always rose to the same "temp" on the gauge.

 

My car had same effect not too long ago.. It was from lack of coolant, and your also right about the idle, if your down a little coolant, your idle will go nuts.. as i slowly added coolant, idle slowly went to normal. The 2 coolant lines that run to the heater core were the issue. One had a small slice in it, and would only leak when the engine was warm. The area that those lines are in are also tricky to observe when they are leaking.