AudiSport4000

The 85 has sat for about 3 days without being driven or started, so I thought Id drive it a bit tonight. Started up great as always, heated up just fine. Temp gauge read normal as I went to my friends house. After I came back to the car, it had sat for perhaps an hour and a half.
Starts up fine again. I then notice as its warmed up, when Im at a stop light, i start to get more cool air from the heat vents (car is on high heat). As the car accellerates, the heat becomes greater. As I just about pull into my addition, the temp gauge is pretty high, not quite near 120C, I try and hurry my *** to the driveway to investigate the problem.
I suspect thermostat, but I wanna see what you guys think. Coolant tank is full, top big radiator hose is a decent temp, but the lower one, running into the water pump, isnt really warm at all, its kinda cold. This may explain why my temps have been fluctuating so much in that car.
Any BTDT? Need help, as always....
TIA

Mike

AudiSport4000

Went through the paperwork for the car, thermostat had been replaced in Jan of 2001 by the Audi dealer. WP is less than a year old too, as is the radiator. Could a thermostat fail this quickly, or is it "normal"?

Mike

JeromeS.

Change thermo anyways..then go from there.

TonyC in IOWA

to me it sounds like classic WP failing symptoms

TundraCGT

I just went through a similar set of symptoms with my wifes Subaru. Thought it was t-stat but symptoms persisted after that was changed. Then on a trip home from the Twin cities the temp spiked while on the highway and it started to spew coolant from the overflow. The only problem was the upper rad hose was cold as was the coolant in the radiator! To add insult to injury an air pocket got trapped in the heater core and I had cold air for the rest of the drive home. I would check T-stat(cheap), water pump, headgasket in that order. HTH

Scott

CGTBrad

I dunno - It doesnt seem to me that there is much to fail on our WP's

Cdn Blue Coupe

Try bleading the air out of the cooling system using the bleader bolt ont he top of the radiator.

QCRAZY

I agree. Sounds like you have trapped air in the system!!

AudiSport4000

Well, where is the "bleeder" valve on the radiator for the 4cyl?

Evilclown

The shaft can break. I even saw an impeller disintegrate once.