Engine temps under heavy traffic conditions

[Mr.Woolery]

It occured to me that there would be many times when driving the Atom that I'll be caught in heavy traffic.  This is an unfortunate side-effect of being a city dweller.

Since the Atom has such a small radiator, does the collective think that engine heatsoaking will become an issue?  If so, would the issue become aggravated by warmer weather?

[Driver]

This is going to be a huge concern here in Texas for me.  Any consensus from those that have driven one in 100+ temps?

[David Ryan]

Havent driven mine in extreem temps yet but have sat in very heavy traffic for long periods with the engine running. No problems at all. If anything she runs a little cool!

D.

[ross]

Nope, the mark 2 cooling these days seems fine.  You shouldn't have any problems.

[Driver]

Cool! 

[Bruce Fielding]

I regularly drive around and through London - not the least congested city on the planet - and haven't had any issues with the car overheating in jams - even when the weather is very hot.

[Mr.Woolery]

That's good to hear.  I don't want to worry about traffic/coolant temps if I happen to be stuck in sunny, Southern California traffic.

[Dezoris]

I drove the 220 around in Oregon in 95 degree weather hard in high elevations and let the car idle for over an hour, after about 3 hours of hard driving I came to an idle for 20 minutes and boiled the coolant over.

Unfortunately I can't say, how old the coolant was.

However after replacing the coolant we had 5 hours at the track of constant high reving etc. and no problems.

I would personally upgrade the radiator, thats just me.

[Driver]

With temps easily 105 and up to 110 in Austin that doesn't bode well. Age of the coolant shouldn't make that much difference. And temperatures on the asphalt  can be in the 120's. Looks like a much beefier 3 or 4 core radiator will be justified.

[Bruce Fielding]

[quote="Dezoris"]
I drove the 220 around in Oregon in 95 degree weather hard in high elevations and let the car idle for over an hour, after about 3 hours of hard driving I came to an idle for 20 minutes and boiled the coolant over.

Unfortunately I can't say, how old the coolant was.

However after replacing the coolant we had 5 hours at the track of constant high reving etc. and no problems.

I would personally upgrade the radiator, thats just me.

[/quote]
This was a standard problem on some cars. There's an easy fix that involves the use of a radiator key to bleed the system a bit. That's all it takes - a 50 cent rad key...

If it's any measure, a car was recently driven across the nightmare of LA in rush hour without a hitch