ok. i drive to mcdonalds for lunch. its maybe a 10 minutes drive, at the most. im in the drive thru, and i look at temp guage...its at 220. the air was on high cause its pretty warm outside now. i watched it for a sec and it didnt go down, so i turned on the heat to see if that would help. no luck. as i pull away from mcdonalds, i get going to about 60 or so, and temp went down to like 190 or 200. it normally runs at about 210 or so, so i was ok with that. but then i got stopped at a red light and temp went to red line, check gauges light came on and everything. and then every person decided they were gonna get in front of me, so i couldnt speed up and see if it would cool down. temp stayed at 260 or whatever the last degree is on the guage until i parked. radiator is new, and water pump has been working fine. i drove the POS yesterday and it was fine. hoses are new. my low coolant light has been on, but it seemed like it was a faulty sensor on the new radiator. ive checked fluids and they were good. but that was a couple days ago. ill check them again later, after the car cools down. hopefully thats all it was or just air in the lines. someone help me. im lost. lol oh yea, 96 ta a4

 

are your fans turning ion?

 

Could be trapped air if recent hose change. Or it may be time to think about a new stat and confirm your fans are running.

 

the fans are on a manual switch, and theyre always running. there wasnt a stat in at the time. i checked coolant level a lil while ago. and it seemed like it there wasnt any. it took almost 3 gallons to fill it up. i put the stat back in. and i did notice when i took how the hose to put the stat back in, the was water just sitting inside the water pump. is that normal? it was just chillin there. the weird thing is, i drove last night, and everything was fine, it wasnt running hot at all. there hasnt been any leaks or coolant puddles under the car either. its like it just disappeared. im going to drive around later and see if its fixed.