Thermostat question

[69hurstolds]

Oh, and feel grateful that our old G-bodies have a couple of rad hoses, maybe a bypass (which you can cut from a piece of heater hose for Olds V8), and a couple of heater hoses that you can get all for fairly cheap. I just replaced coolant, T-stat, heater hoses, vent hose, and radiator hoses on the 2010 Camaro. I changed coolant out about 5 years ago, but this time I had a leaky oil cooler so I updated the non-cooler upper hose into the mix and got rid of that leaky oil cooler POS. I saved it all though along with a discontinued GM cooler gasket repair kit, in case the next owner wanted to "restore" it or whatever, I won't care. I just know I've bought cars and the PO had thrown away all the "extra" stuff they took off the car when they modded it which meant having to buy more junk. At least the next owner can breathe easier by having a choice. Except I'm not going to fix it for them. 🙂

I got the parts from Rockauto and GM, depending on who was cheaper. The heater hose "kit" came with both pre-bent hoses, which was almost $42 by itself from Rockauto ($103.81 GM list price), and cost me total about $140 for all the hoses, coolant, and ACDelco T-stat, even with the discount. SAME PART NUMBER. Dang GM!

 

[airboatgreg]

All good info above but back in the day people would take the t-stat out. This created hot spots in engines. If you look at head and intakes gaskets for coolant passages you will see some restricted and some wide open. Basically whether you go with a 180 or a 192 degree you need to have a good quality t-stat as well as the proper radiator cap. Remember the antifreeze and the cap increase the boiling point of the coolant mixture, Most computerized factory fans come on at about 130 degrees. My 2 cents. I have an AC/Delco 192 degree t-stat and an AC/Delco cap in my El C

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

There are stagnant areas of coolant flow inside the block and heads which can boil and cause hot steam pockets. This why there is usually some sort of restrictor on the outlet out of the engine like a Tstant. It both causes more turbulence to displace the stagnant spots and increases pressure inside the block to raise the boiling point. Remember, the radiator cap is located on the low pressure side of the cooling system for most cars.