coming home from el paso in the middle of the week at 10pm, 68 degrees outside and running 80mph down the highway the car was still running on the brink of 200 degrees. so i got to thinking, its cool outside, should make up for any radiator inefficiencies, 80mph overcomes any air flow problems, and its still running hot, so it HAS to be a flow problem. so i got a new water pump. took off the new one i installed back in may and blew the backing plate off to compare to the new new one i had sitting there. the new one had the impeller pressed on it with about a 3/16 gap between the casing, the new new one only had about a 1/16 gap. HMMMMMM, can that really make that big a difference?? looked a little harder and also noticed that the impellers were not parallel to the casing like the new new one. HMMMMMM, thats not right either. looks like when the impeller was pressed on it was tweaked a bit. not having one to compare to when i took it off before i never noticed this. so i put on the new new one and took her for a drive. runs 170 around town with the a/c running. woohoo progress!!! over the past couple days i have been paying real close attention and she will creep up to 185 at a long light, but as soon as i get moving again, it drops right back to 170. with the a/c on she will see 190 at a light or in really slow traffic, but comes right back to 175-180 soon as im rolling again. in the morning it takes almost the entire ride to work for the heater to even try to blow warm, guess there is one draw back...lol!! just wanted to update you on the situation and let everyone else know...it may look fine, but untill you KNOW what a good one looks like, you can never be sure. i would have never thought that little difference in clearance would have been the problem, but i got proof in the pudding that it was.

thanks again to everyone for all the suggestions, i tryed at least 95% of them. as frustrating as it was to come up empty handed so many times, it sure it gratifying to finally get it beat.