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thermostat

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vwthumper

New member
i have put a lower temp thermostat in and now after a certain time my service engine light comes on and when i get the code checked it tells me the thermostat is not letting engine temp come up to normal operating temp ,,,what do i need to do
 


Put a warmer t-stat in. Stick with a stock t-stat. There is no need for a cooler t-stat in a daily driver.
 
The 160* thermostat will do that. As Zef states, run a stock stat or you could even go with 180* stat but that would be the minimum I would go. With 160* stat, you are running your engine so cool you will burn more fuel and get what is called fuel washing in the cylinders. That fuel will slide down the cylinder walls and wash away oil that helps to keep things lubricated and cool to a point and then it will drip down into your crank case causing fuel dilution. At this point it will thin your oil out in a hurry (the cut off for fuel dilution is about 2%, anything more than that and its considered a critical situation) and will reduce drastically your oils ability to prevent metal to metal contact in high load situations and will cause your wear to increase.

Will it destroy it over night? No, but over time you will wear that engine out much much faster with a 160* tstat than one with 180* or stoc tstat.
 
Dont quote me on the numbers, as I read a study about 5 years ago on running colder T-stats. If your car runs a 195* stock and you go with a 180*, you can cut some of the KR, at a cost of about a 2% increase in engine wear. If you drop to a 160*, you may or may not see any more gains over a 180* t-stat, but your engine wear increases to 30%. That goes right along with what Scotty is saying above. The engineers at GM designed the motor more for longevity than performance, hence the reason they put in a 195* t-stat. If you drop a pulley size, you can (and probably will) increase the amount of KR you have and if you dont have some sort of tuning program, you can drop to a 180* t-stat and drop to a colder plug to try and even out the KR.

On a side note, I have been running a 180* drilled t-stat for 5 years and have put over 160K miles on my car and no problems so far.

webracin
 


if you choose to not go with a stock then the 180* drilled is the way to go. i can vouch for it as well as webracin can i see. just takes a bit to warm that cargo up haha
 
vwthumper said:
i have put a lower temp thermostat in and now after a certain time my service engine light comes on and when i get the code checked it tells me the thermostat is not letting engine temp come up to normal operating temp ,,,what do i need to do
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hey hows it going had the same problem if you have a 160 or 180 u need to get a code # deleted from the pcm
 
[email protected] said:
hey hows it going had the same problem if you have a 160 or 180 u need to get a code # deleted from the pcm
Click to expand...

A 180* will not require the code to be removed. I believe 160* or 170* is the threshold that the engine has to get to so it doesn't set the code.

YoungGTP said:
if you choose to not go with a stock then the 180* drilled is the way to go. i can vouch for it as well as webracin can i see. just takes a bit to warm that cargo up haha
Click to expand...

A 180* doesn't change how long it takes your car to warm up. Heater performance isn't really changed either. Drilled thermostats do make your car take longer.
 
I've run 180* on my Imp for over a year, no low temp code. Still going back and forth whether to do the "winter switch" on my thermo on the Imp.
 


Sabrewings said:
Unless its drilled, why would you need to change it?
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With the colder weather, the car will run cooler, and it won't run as efficient. Gasoline powered engines run most efficient at 195* - that's why that's the standard rate. I put the 180* because of the other mods I did, and I wanted to make sure I didn't burn it out. When I got my GP, I had to replace the thermo. I put in a 180* with zero mods, and a shop that looked it over noted the car was running cool. They thought I had a 160* thermo in it. I switched it to a 195* since I don't have the mods that really require the lower temp one. It was a previous discussion here when I asked if a car could run too cool. I didn't change it last year, so I'm not in a big hurry to do it. What I'd need to do is run the Imp with 180* for a week or so and then again with the 195* I can pull from my GP and compare MPG on both.
 
Sabrewings said:
A 180* will not require the code to be removed. I believe 160* or 170* is the threshold that the engine has to get to so it doesn't set the code.



A 180* doesn't change how long it takes your car to warm up. Heater performance isn't really changed either. Drilled thermostats do make your car take longer.
Click to expand...

sabring i did say drilled
 
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