My 206CC runs a fever, right before plunging into hypothermi

[52nd of February]

Good morning everyone!

I've done a forum search but the closest I could find was about the time it took for the oil temperature to reach 90 which isn't my problem

So one day (last night) I was waiting in the car for my sister after doing alot of driving and reached down to fix my jeans cuff and brushed up against the underside of the steering column which felt unusually warm, seeing as I'd had the roof down all day, and it's been quite cool...

This made me look at the temperature gauge under the revs counter (oil I think?). The car had been turned off for 20 minutes now. I know its normally at 90, but there it was, sitting on 110 (border of the red, eep! ) Turn the car on, it rapidly falls back to 90 - all is well.

Later on that night, while driving it's down at 75 - 80

Ambient temperature at these times was between 20 and 16 degrees.


Not sure if this is a problem or not, it's just that I've never seen such erratic behaviour out of it, so I thought I'd ask someone with some engine knowledge

Thank you


EDIT: I am aware that slight temperature deviation from the 90 is normal, it's been at 105 once but that was on a 35 degree day in full fierce summer sun so I thought nothing of it. It's just that I've never seen fluctuation like this over such a range. Also, my dad believes said temperature gauge is in fact water temperature which, when the engine is turned off, water in the pipes gets heated by the still-hot engine and that will explain why it fell back to 90 when the car was turned back on, but even so, 110 degrees after 20 minutes in the cold seems a bit excessive...

[52nd of February]

Hi everyone

Drove up to the Gold Coast 2 days ago, temp between 95 and 105. On the way home, temp didnt move off 70.

Turns out this fluctuating water temperature gauge WAS a problem - it's not normal and they're meant to hang around 80-90 degrees. The problem was that the normally green or pink coolant had turned to a horrible brown sludge - due to hard water being put into the coolant system. The minerals in the hard water had blocked up the filter and thermostat, causing it to only open at high temperatures, and even then it didn't open fully or properly. 4 and a half hours labour, a full system clean out, new filter and new thermostat = $466.37 (or, at the current exchange rate, 273.23 GBP, seeing as this is a .uk site )

Hard water is bad for the engine in many ways, not just in the coolant system - so if you tackle a DIY job, DISTILLED WATER ONLY