My car overheated the other night when I was driving home. I pulled over and filled up my radiator with some water and “stop leak” goo. I brought the car to my mechanic and he recommended replacing the radiator rather than patching it up. I have a 98 Honda Civic that reached 94,000 (i just had my 90,000 service from the same guys) What should I do, replace the radiator and spend $500?
$500 seems rather high for a radiator. I’d shop around a bit for a better price.
I found several '98 Civic radiators online for less than $100.00, and there isn’t $400 worth of labor involved in replacing one.
This job is a lot more labor intensive than you would expect. I just replaced my original 98 Civic radiator for the same reason, but I have 185,000 miles on my Civic. Fortunately, I found the leak before my car overheated.
I would fork over the $500 or try to look around for a better price. I saw quotes as high as $700 for this job, so I did it myself.
josepagina, go ahead and also replace the two radiator hoses and the radiator cap if yours are the originals.