The car over heats while idling then cools as you drive

Chances are your coolant level is low or an air pocket is present in the cooling system.

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On these and many other vehicles, use a vacuum refill coolant air lift.This removes all air in the cooling system and then fills the cooling system fully with coolant.

Sounds like you are getting poor water circulation, have you ever had to change the water pump? I have in rare cases seen the impellers erode away on the pump and it was no longer able to move water around the cooling system correctly.

Sounds to me like stuck themostate replace then try it

thermostat needs changing idling mean no air flow. so it can heat up. driving the air flow cooling the front radiator cools the system down and you get no heat. your temp gauge will be moving about more than normal.

is there a chance that one of your heater hoses are clogged? or where they connect to the engine are clogged still? sounds like a clogged system. Cracked heater housing? Outside air bypassing the heater coil while driving?

Check thermostat .

At idling speed an engine does build up a lot of heat and the cooling fan will kick in. In slow moving traffic or traffic jams the temperature gauge can touch the red - particularly on hot days. The reason it cools down when you start moving is because of the air flow through the radiator.

Presumably there are no leaks from the cooling system otherwise you would have mentioned it. In normal circumstances the fan will not be running as you are driving at speed, as the air-flow through the radiator is sufficient to cool things. The fan only kicks in to get rid of excess heat - and this usually occurs at idling speed or after you have parked the car.

If the fan is running all the time as you drive, this points to either a fault in the fan switch, or the car is running too hot. presumably in normal driving the fan isn't running and the temperature gauge reads normal?

It is common - in stationary traffic many cars overheat (particularly big engined models) try to stall and 'cut out'. Restarting can be difficult until the engine cools down.

Is your car overheating in normal driving conditions or just at idle speed? Overheating in normal driving conditions can be caused by things like a failing water pump, blocked radiator, collapsed hose, faulty thermostat or, in the worst case scenario, cylinder head problems.

Overheating at idling speed is 'common'. Check your coolant level. If your car isn't using/losing coolant then there probably is no major problem. You can flush out the cooling system and refill with new coolant - and also check your radiator. Are the cooling fins crumbling with age? Or maybe they're partly clogged with insects and debris from the road? A blast with a hosepipe wil sort that out ..

The question is how much does your car overheat in normal driving? If it doesn't .. it appears as though you have nothing to worry about as such. Most cars have 2 speed fans... the 2nd faster stage kicks in at some point dependant on engine temperature. Perfectly normal.

Check the heating element/heater-plug. The heating-element or hearter-plug heats the gas before getting into the engine. A shop manual is good to guide you.

Replace the thermostat. If thermo is stuck open, coolant only heats up when there is no flow over radiator(idle) and then cools down when driving. Also, check coolant level, same response as stuck thermo.