Can anyone explain this? - 986 Forum - The Community for Porsche Boxster & Cayman Owners

hippojam1 · 06-18-2006, 09:37 AM

last night i was driving on the 101 freeway in LA which they closed down and made us take a detour through city streets. So it was lots of waiting in stopped traffic and inching up. So obviously I was in going back and forth from first gear to idle, back and forth, clutch going in and out. (I have a manual.)

And the engine temperature started to climb to 190+. (It's almost always at 180.) It wasn't revving above 1500 RPM plus or minus, so I thought that was strange. (And it was 2 am, so it was cool out.)

And then the funniest thing happened. I got back on the freeway from the detour and opened it up, revving up to 5-6000 RPM, to see if there was some sort of problem...and the engine temperature actually declined back to 180!!

Can anyone explain this? Does it have to do with keeping the clutch in for longer periods of time? Seems very odd to me...

PorscheDoc · 06-18-2006, 09:44 AM

In hot weather at idle, you have no head wind speed to flow through your radiators and cool the car down. Once you start moving faster, you have more air going through the radiator, hence why it cools down. Completely normal.

RandallNeighbour · 06-18-2006, 09:46 AM

It's completely normal if both your radiator fans are working up front. Check them with the car at idle and the AC blowing and the engine up to temp. Both should be blowing and making a racket.

hippojam1 · 06-18-2006, 09:55 AM

oh, that makes perfect sense. how did i not even think about that? now i feel stupid. i think i'll go return my engineering degree back to my alma mater now...

RandallNeighbour · 06-18-2006, 11:14 AM

I'm not sure why I second guessed every single thing on this car compared to every other car I've had... must be the fact that I've wanted a Porsche my whole life and I was petrofied that little things were going to be incredibly expensive to repair or I'd mess up the car if I didn't jump on everything I noticed about it after purchase.

I'm sure your engineering degree is handy with lots of work things as well as car issues... keep it!

hippojam1 · 06-18-2006, 11:28 AM

true, i am worried about anything going wrong with my boxster. it's such an amazing work of engineering and design, i love every minute i'm sitting in it. plus, last year before i got the boxster, the engine on my 7 year old audi A4 cracked during an especially hot day and cost $4k to fix. i don't want that happening again.