Radiator / Overheating Problem

[dr. d]

^ Doc Is there a sure way to determine the slow but progressive deterioration of the operational capacity of the rad fan?

I regularly check the coolant reservoir of my fd2's rad and i notice there's a gradual decrease in the amount of coolant in it in a time frame of over several months.

do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do

it's like growing kids, i suppose.
if you see them every day, you won't notice their increasing height.
but if you see them only once a year during mano-po-season, you will notice it, that is, if you remember how short (or tall) they were the previous year..

but if i were to hazard a guess... i probably would suspect it if my temp needle goes beyond what i normally see.
in my car, that would be beyond the halfway mark to, say, at least 5/8 , in heavy traffic.
my other car kasi (no aux fan, but a direct-drive with silicone-operated clutch), or my sentra when it was new, kahit one hour in standstill noonday traffic, the needle still kept a little under halfway.

in my instance, i thought the blow was strong. only a side-by-side comparison convinced me otherwise.

in retrospect, it was my over-reving temp needle (won't work with some cars' idiot temp warning light), and the loss of coolant, both in the radiator and in the reservoir.
the soundness of the old-timer's advice hit me, when i actually saw steam bubbling out of the reservoir. it meant that my coolant in the radiator wasn't getting cooled, and was bubbling out into the reservoir, resulting in overheated reservoir coolant, thus resulting in bubbling.
i expected similar symptoms with a clogged radiator. but as i know for a fact that my radiator had recently been cleaned...