Hi everyone,

My 83 Volvo DL has been running very well lately, I only had to recently replace the lower ball joint on the passenger side.

However, I have had a reoccurring problem with my car overheating when it is a hot day. When it is a mild to cold day it runs great and never has any problems. Also the temperature rises even quicker when stopped in traffic.

I live in Phoenix, AZ and as everyone probably knows it gets very hot and stays that way every day in the summer months so if someone has any idea what to check to find a solution to this problem that would be great.

thermostat, unless you are running low on antifreeze.

Is the cooling fan switching on when it gets hot ?

still using viscous coupling in 83?

if so check at idle and it should be running very fast and if not replace it

if OK get a full reverse flush on rad

but it you get to remove t/stat, is the inside of housing totally clean or gunked up [from using water]

if gunked get new volvo :amen: as whole block is gunked

I did fill up the anti-freeze today and since it is another hot day I'll see how the car behaves and I'll give you guys an update.

Thanks for the input.

Okay I took the car for an hour drive from school here to Pittsburgh and it ran fine for the most part. When climbing hills and such, the temperature would show a definite increase but would never reach the red line.

Then when I would start going downhill it would drop back down and so forth. I would assume this is typical as the engine does have to work harder going uphill but I didn't think the change should be so noticeable

Have you tried wiggling the wire connecting the temp sensor, I had a problem where the temp guage would give false readings, It started out giving readings that were slightly high or slightly low, but at the right time, for example slightly high when towing up hill etc. I thought the same as you that this was normal as the engine was working harder, but I had never noticed this before, gradually the problem got worse showing very high and very low, so on a cool day going down hill with little weight in the car the guage would be off the bottom and vice versa working hard on a warm day (or as warm as it gets in the UK).


The car (84DL) would never actually overheat and stop, and everything else in the cooling system was working fine.

Problem was solved by cutting back the wire at the sensor end and a new connector.

No i haven't tried looking at the connector where exactly is it located and then I'll check it out

remember that in USA only Volvo "dumbed down" the gauge so that it does not show minor variations [which is really quite dumb]

because one overheat can kill engine I have 2 separate gauges - one IN and one OUT of engine

From everything you have described I would say you have a bad fan clutch. I had similar symptoms with my car.