overheat only in stop and go

[Chris Covington]

Ti et al,

No my radiator fan does not come on.  I will check the fuse, etc. tonight
to see what's going on.

Chris
'91 200q20v

On Sun, 15 Jul 2001, Ti Kan wrote:

> Chris Covington writes:
> > Picked up the 200q20v again after not driving it for awhile, took it to
> > Boston and all was well until I hit traffic at the 84/90 intersection and
> > then again outside the tollbooths around the city.  In traffic, the car's
> > water temp would rise to about the 1 bar away from the top of the heat
> > range and the red thermometer light would go off on the Autocheck.  It
> > never went any higher temp-wise, probably helped by my blasting the heat.
> > Could this be the rad. fan or the thermo, etc.?  How can I determine?  The
> > problem never happens during non-city driving.
>
> Check your coolant level to make sure it's above the minimum mark.
>
> Does your radiator fan come on when the temperature rises?  If not,
> that's the cause of your problem.  Possible culprits in that department
> are the thermoswitch that control tha fan, the fan relay, or the fan
> itself.
>
> If the radiator fan comes on but the temperature does not drop, then
> you either have a bad thermostat or a clogged radiator.
>
> -Ti
> 01 S4 2.7 biturbo quattro
> 84 5000S 2.1 turbo
> 80 4000 2.0
> --
>     ///  Ti Kan                Vorsprung durch Technik
>    ///   AMB Research Laboratories, Sunnyvale, CA. USA
>   ///    ti at amb.org
>  //////  http://www.amb.org/ti/
> ///