I finally got around to changing out my coolant temp sensor (the one near the thermostat). This cleared up my flaky dash gauge (it was intermittent - mostly never reading anything). However, now I'm not getting any heat from the car. I'm afraid that I may have air in the coolant lines to the heater block, if this is possible, since I lost a lot of coolant by removing the heater hose to gain access to the sensor.
The good news - my ACC seems to actually try to make the interior warm up (blower is on strong), making me think that the sensor is also used to tell the ACC that the engine is warmed up. Before fixing the sensor, my ACC would not turn on the blower, thinking that the engine was always cold.
I am not sure that I got the car hot enough to open the thermostat and force coolant through the whole system, but I'm a little scared to run the car if there is a possibility that there is air in the system and it could create hot spots in the block due to air. Should I be worried? I should probably also drain and flush the whole system - it's been a while.
The good news - my ACC seems to actually try to make the interior warm up (blower is on strong), making me think that the sensor is also used to tell the ACC that the engine is warmed up. Before fixing the sensor, my ACC would not turn on the blower, thinking that the engine was always cold.
I am not sure that I got the car hot enough to open the thermostat and force coolant through the whole system, but I'm a little scared to run the car if there is a possibility that there is air in the system and it could create hot spots in the block due to air. Should I be worried? I should probably also drain and flush the whole system - it's been a while.