Just purchased a GD3 Fit mainly as a commuter car. I noticed while sitting at the drive thru the hot coolant light was flashing but as soon as I started moving it went away. I checked the coolant reservoir and saw it empty and also saw it had a crack so I bought a new one flushed the old coolant with new coolant. I tried burping my coolant system after a coolant flush and noticed that it was taking over 40 mins and the car still wasn't reaching operating temps (200 F). I stopped, thought it was the thermostat, I just installed a new one. I also checked the relays to make sure radiator fans where turning on and those were. So I start the car up again with the new thermostat and reservoir still maybe about 30-40 mins car finally hits 200 F, but I noticed the fans were not turning on. So two problems here, car is taking longer than usual to reach op temp, and fans aren't working. With the fans I'm assuming since I can get them going with a paperclip in the relay they are working, and would just need a new coolant temp sensor maybe. I also want to know if this is normal for the car to take that long to reach operating temp, especially since i'm trying to burp the system.

TIA

 

I think I can reassure you that this is normal: when working on the coolant system on mine, I was amazed at how long it took before the fans would turn on (almost an hour in cool weather), and even then they would only run for a few seconds. The fans hardly ever seem to run during normal operation (if AC is off) in the temperate climate here. You've confirmed that the fans are working, so I'd suggest monitoring the coolant temperature via OBD and check that the readings and trends look reasonable, and try holding the engine at around 3000 RPM in neutral to get it to warm up faster. Holding the engine above idle is the official recommendation in some of the Honda service information:
EVAP System Troubleshooting (L12A/L13A 5MT without ETCS)

Good catch on the broken coolant reserve tank!

 

I remembered I had made some notes on burping the coolant system:

• Confirm fan operation before proceeding, e.g. by turning the AC on.
• Elevate the front of the car (e.g. park on an incline) to help air find its way out.
• Turn up the cabin heat so that coolant will circulate through the heater core.
• The factory bleed procedure is mostly fine. However, at idle and in cool ambient conditions, the engine can take an hour to warm up to the point where the radiator fan comes on.
• Trapped air (especially if you've just replaced the thermostat) can mean that the thermostat doesn't open and the radiator fan won't come on at all, despite the engine temperature rising dramatically! Therefore, monitor the ECT via OBD while testing, and shut off the engine if it exceeds 95 °C. DON'T just wait for the radiator fan to come on. Let it heat soak for a while before trying again.
• Be prepared to run a few heat cycles to bleed the air out and allow heat soak into the thermostat (so it gets warm even if the hot engine coolant can't reach it due to air lock).
• Rev the engine a bit to heat things up faster and to run the water pump faster, in order to help bleed out air and get the coolant everywhere it should go.

For reference, the thermostat specifications are:

• 82 °C (180 °F) nominal (marked on the thermostat)
• Begins to open: 80-84 °C (176-183 °F)
• Fully open: 95 °C (203 °F)

The radiator fan thermo-switch specs are:

• Turns ON at 91-95 °C (196-203 °F)
• Turns OFF at 3-8 °C (5-15 °F) below the actual ON temperature

Source:
Standards and Service Limits - 1

 

Thank you so much, that's actually much more assuring. I drove the car around the other day, it hit around 203 and yeah fans turned on, so that's a relief. So op temp at idle seems to take forever. But so far it hasn't overheated, ac blows cold, hot air comes when set to hot. but i'm going to give it one more try to see if i can get to op temp for fans to run and burp coolant. Thanks for your respone!