Up jumps the needle

my car a 95 civic dx has been sweating me agian....so i just wanna know would a water pump and possible small leak in the headgasket cause my car to overheat? I went to the a shop but and that what they told me...i changed the radiator and thermo and that fixed it for a while and now it back agian....help me out ppl thanx..

if you need a waterpump I would expect overheating to be a serious problem...

Sometimes water pumps do funny things, like when you are accelerating, it will overheat, but if the rpms are at a constant level, then it won't overheat. A hole in the head gasket will cause you to loose coolant.

I just had a bunch of trouble with overheating in my 94 DX too. I had to replace the water pump, hoses, radiator, thermo, and head gasket because the car was running damn hot here in the 9th circle of hell (aka FL). Seems that a faulty water pump was the start of it so definately replace that if you need to, and make sure it works! You could save yourself alot of money in the end. Also it seems that with the cooling system doing everything fine, what ian112784 said is right, changing rpm alot is bad, just try to be smoother and it should stay down.