Both hoses are hot when the car has warmed up fully and the cooling fan comes on.

 

You bought the car at 96K miles. Did you change the belts and water pump? They should have been done at 90K miles.

Change the thermostat too.

 

To finally get my to fully bleed i had to park on my driveway incline AND jack it up so my car was significantly angled and that is when I got the last few bubbles but I had swapped out my heater core so i had a lot of air. My 1997 DX does not have a bleeder bolt but some models do. But as far as getting those last bubbles a rubber mallet cant hurt and might loosen it but I do not know if that would be your problem.

Does it heat up when driving or just when sitting still?
Try running the car with no tstat.

You may want to replace hoses, any that coolant runs through because they do get old and leak. Lastly the tstat housing should technically have a liquid gasket around it when you put it back on. Either of those could be getting air in the system or cause you to loose coolant once under pressure (as vapor) thus you would not notice dripping.

Just throwing out anything I can think of -_-

 

Timing belt and water pump were changed at 90k ish according to the previous owner.

I will try getting the car on a steeper angle for another bleed attempt.

The temp is generally cooler while driving at higher revs, but warms up and then fluctuates at lower rpms or when sitting at idle. Fluctuates between 1/2 and 3/4 or so. Cooling fan turns on and off periodically as normal. All hoses seem good as far as I can tell. (No surface cracks or bulging.)

Will driving the car with a small amount of air in the system damage anything? I need to make a fairly long drive tonight.

 

Do not drive it hot, it is not worth the possible damage it can cause (trust me -_-).

Try jumping the fan switch and seeing if the fan stays on steadily, make sure the motor is functioning properly. If it says hot at higher RPM (implying you are moving?) and heating up when lower (not so much moving?) then it sounds like it could be a fan problem. If the motor stays on fine then trying changing the switch (i think you said you already did but it is possible it is a bad one). For a while i drove with the fan jumped and had to pop the hood and unjump it every time but it got me around.

Outside of that I would continue to check the suggestions in past posts.

 

So I tried the bleed procedure again, and this time I tried revving the engine a bit after it warmed up to help move any air bubbles along. I got a bunch of bubbles to come out, but then a steady supply of small bubbles would come out every second or so, and I could not get those to go away even after 30min or so.

Sounds like a bad head gasket to me.

 

gasket and/or hoses could be leaking, more likely head gasket =(

 

Got some good news yesterday! It's not the head gasket! Took the car in the other day prepared to pay for a head gasket, but turns out the stupid temp sending unit I bought from the parts store was faulty. They replaced it and now the engine warms up in the expected length of time and stays pegged at normal temp!

I guess the quality control on some of those aftermarket parts must be pretty poor.

 

Since most aftermarket parts are made in China these days that's no surprise. Glad it wasn't a HG!