Hot Car Engine 3 Hours After Parking it in Heat Wave Region

It's hotter than it has ever been there. And humid.

Cars in Arizona get that hot all the time. Drive on.

have you tried leaving the hood open?

Run it at idle. Does the fan clutch engage? Turn on the heater. Open the windows. Give the heat a place to go!

I put a manual fan control to one of my old cars. The type that looks like an egg timer. It ran the fan for about 5 minutes to cool the radiator and block. It doesn't cool the fluid inside the engine, but it helped. During traffic jams I could turn it on to keep the engine cool before the thermostat kicked on auto. Don't just put a switch as it will kill your battery.

turn on your cars heater to high and fan to high -- open the windows

that will bring coolant into the heater where air from the fan can help remove heat from the coolant.

I guess your temperature sensor has you locked out so you can't start the engine ?

Find the temperature sensor on the engine block and spray it with electronics cooler, or pack it in ice to fool the sensor.

Keep more room between your car and the car ahead to reduce the exhaust heat sucked into your radiator, on some cars the electric fan drive does continue to run after the engine is shut off, on some cars a second electric cooling fan can be mounted on the front of the radiator to help cool the engine and transmission when driving in slow traffic.

Have you had your engine and tranny serviced so they are performing correctly ?

Since it is Sun irradiation mainly, a silvery sunscreen both in your windshield and over your hood will make the difference.

Cheap, quick, my kind of solution.

If you want to spend more, there are portable sunshades / garages with silvery coating. That will get you all the way to the coolest car in the county.

You should be very Leary of temperature gauges.

I had a situation when I purchased a second hand vehicle the water temp gauge always read down in the cool area, I just thought the gauge was not working correctly. One day the needle moved up to a more normal reading, ah great I thought it is finally working OK. Little did I know my water pump was slowly giving up the ghost, the next result was a seized engine. Fortunately the worst damage was a warped head.

I normally run a kombi so was used to air cooling with an oil temperature gauge this has fairly rapid response to engine temperature. Probably the best situation with a water cooled engine is to have an oil temp gauge as well this will confirm either or the engine temp.

How did you decide that the engine was staying hot for 3 hours?

Was it because the cooling fan kept running?

Was it the temperature gauge?

Because without knowing the correct answer, nobody here can help you.....though they have tried!

If its the cooling fan, it should run 5 minutes or so, even in a hot country, 15 minutes at the most!!!!

I suspect you are going by the fan, so if it runs 3 hours (how does the battery handle that?), you need the timer circuit (probably a simple thermostat) adjusted or replaced.

I was just noticing that the never ending high temps outside were not being helped to get any cooler from the oven parked in my driveway and thought I would check to see if anyone had a solution to cooling a normal hot engine down real quick .sorry I was so hot I wasnt any clearer on what I

Quick cooling is a waste of time, probably also of water and/or power and it could damage some parts of the engine if done incorrectly.

Depending upon the type of Turbo, if you have one fitted, it was always recommended to run the engine at tick over for a minute to drop the temp of the turbo as they run almost red hot at continuous highway speeds......

Some later ones are water cooled, they do not need this treatment.

Also using a fully synthetic oil is good for hot engines, it dramatically increases the life expectancy of almost any engine where it is allowed to be used.....I have been using it for around 20 years on all my cars, both private & company. Not a single engine failure with some reaching 400,000 KMs. Then being sold still running fine to the next user....

A way to cool it quickly is to run a garden hose on the radiator to cool the coolant in the radiator with the engine running. As the coolant cools and passes through the engine, it will cool the engine down considerably.

After getting to where you can service your car, consider the following:

NOTE: To be done only after allowing engine to cool.

Perhaps your thermostat is sticking, replace it with a new one.

If you happen to find that there is no thermostat (located in the discharge side hose on top of engine) then I suggest that you replace it, add coolant and replace the radiator cap with a new one rated for your car in an effort to keep from losing coolant. It sounds like you may have either a stuck thermostat or one that has been removed as you were wondering about mal-adjustments which make them appear to run too cool under other conditions (If you bought the car used, someone may have tried to remedy this by removing the thermostat) or you may have a slow leak or bad radiator cap. The radiator cap is there to increase the temperature at which your coolant would start to vaporize (turn to steam). (See steam tables or Mollier Chart.) If the cap's seal releases pressure too soon, it can be a source of over-heating.

Also look for other possible sources of coolant leakage if the above doesn't solve your problem. i.e. head gasket leaks, pinhole leaks in hoses, heater core, or radiator, etc.

As others have already stated, make sure that the fan is working properly as that can also cause over-heating.

Go find the nearest bracket racer (if you don't know - drag racing against a set time) and ask him. As a former bracket racer, I know that the good ones (I wasn't good) know every trick in the book to get their engine back to a desired starting line temperature in the 10 minutes or less they have in the last few rounds. This will require some mechanical modifications such as extra electric fans.

There are a number of universal auxiliary fans that most auto parts supply stores carry. AutoZone has an on-line catalogue that could help you locate one. The fan comes shrouded and generally attaches either either in front of the radiator (to push air through it) or between the radiator and factory clutch fan to pull cool air through the radiator.

As a kid, I had an old pick up in TX that I could never seem to cool down. This did the trick. It works off a relay and keeps running for some time after the engine is shut down to keep removing heat from the radiator and across the engine block.

Try the AutoZone website or your favorite parts store. They are simple to install and usually not expensive. (MUCH cheaper that a blown head gasket repair!)

Good luck!