The Chrysler K-Car Club

Hi everyone
I am having some trouble with the heat in my 1988 Chrysler Reliant.

About 2 months ago my temp. gauge started moving up to the hot area, it never went into the red, but I decided to drain the fluids and replace the hoses, the Thermostat, and the Coolant Temp Sensor. After I did all of this I now have no heat. I was careful to put the thermostat in the way the old one came out (spring in, facing the motor). I filled it with Antifreeze and let it run for about 10 minutes, filling the reservoir as it was sucked into the engine. All of the connections seem to be fine but now theirs no heat at all. As I let it run now, the temp. goes up to the center of the gauge, the fan comes on, but the temp still rises towards the high side. When I turn on the heat to high and hot the temp drops back to the center area. Before all of this work the temp. would go right up to the center of the gauge and stay there no matter what happened, and I had some heat at that time. Also, there is no coolant smell or leakage in the drivers compartment.

Any troubleshooting hints I can try?
Could this be caused by a bad/clogged heater core?
Could I have installed the Thermostat wrong?

Thanks in advance, fellow K Car lovers!

P.S. The car only has a little over 84,000 original miles!!

Thanks
Jim

You could have an air pocket in the system. There is a bleeding procedure since portion of the cooling system are above the radiator. Alternatively, you could have a head gasket starting to go bad. Did it have normal heat before you took it apart? If normal before you started probably just a bleeding issue.

See link below.
http://www.allpar.com/fix/radiator-purge.html

There are also funnel kits available to make the bleeding easier. See link to one below.
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/LIS0/24680.oap