I drove the car to work today, and it ran pretty hot, but performed in a considerably more lively manner than it has in the past, with its new ignition relay and some carb tuning. I arrived at work pondering the growing temperature problem, parked, and turned the key off which to my utter astonishment had absolutely no effect. The car kept on running, in the manner of my old Mercedes diesel with a vacuum leak. Embarrassed, I opened the hood while curious coworkers looked on and made ribald remarks. I tried the first solution I could think of which was to pop off the pink trigger wire to the relay. The engine died and I went on about my day pondering the significance of this event. I could make no sense of it, as the trigger wire powered off the relay when physically disconnected, just as it should have done with the key off. At the end of the day I went out, reconnected the wire, and drove home with the engine still running too hot. The same thing happened when I arrived, but after disconnecting and reconnecting the pink wire, everything worked normally.
Mysterious, but I spent a few minutes troubleshooting the overheating problem and soon found (in addition to some slightly janky fan wiring I had done previously) that the new thermostat is stuck closed. The sensation of the fan blowing hot air at the top and cool air at the bottom was a strange one. I'll have to swap that out and see what's up with it, and at this point I might as well flush the cooling system completely.
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