Overheated Radiators for Dummies

temperature gauge of overheated engine

If there's any truism that our researchers have developed for the niche sites in which the old eHow.com content has been deposited, it's probably that verbosity is the chief cause of misinformation. In case you didn't know, eHow required that their contributors cobble together 300 to 500 words of content for every post. Many topics could have been addressed in just a couple of sentences, and freelancers attempting to pad out an answer on unfamiliar topics often introduced factual errors, That's the case with today's nominee, Elizabeth Punke, and her post "What Causes a Car's Temperature Gauge to Increase?" at ItStillRuns.com.

Punke, now making her fourth appearance as our DotD, came up with a total of three potential causes:

1. Water Pump
2. Cracked Radiator
3. Broken Gauge

We aren't certain why she omitted Faulty Thermostat, since that's probably the most likely cause. It's a darned sight lot more likely than this notion:

"It is not uncommon to have a gauge break or not register any longer. Some cars have temperature gauges that have been overused, possibly because the vehicle overheated in the past, causing the gauge to fluctuate too often."

Strangely, though, the word "thermostat" doesn't appear anywhere in Elizabeth's post. Instead, she tries to tell her readers that,

• "[the] water pump is used to cool the engine and other parts of the car." – Really? What "other parts" does the cooling system cool?
• "The radiator uses engine coolant, sending it through various hoses to cool the engine..." – Apparently, Punke is unaware that the coolant actually passes through the engine block.

Punke mentions neither the thermostat nor the possibility of a leaking head gasket. Heck, she never even mentions the possibility of a cracked block (something two different AN staffers have suffered). Instead, she somehow came up with the idiotic notion that a "likely" cause is a temperature gauge that has been "overused." We're still wondering where she came up with that notion, since it the concept doesn't appear in either of the references in the eHow original. Given that she never mentioned thermostats and that it's quite clear she is unfamiliar with the cooling systems of internal combustion engines, some of our staffers were wondering if perhaps our Dumbass of the Day thought that "thermostat" thingy people keep talking about is the same thing as the gauge on the dash. That would explain a lot!

copyright © 2018-2022 scmrak

SE - RADIATORS