Got my 160° thermostat by Fed X yesterday, the Service Manual says to use a new housing when you change thermostats.

Do I need to go to the dealer and buy a housing and gasket before I swap the thermostats?

 

nope

 

no new one on mine

 

Nada

 

How easy is it to change the thermostat?

 

Drain the cooling system.
Remove the radiator hose at the thermostat housing.
Remove 2 bolts on the thermostat housing.
Remove the thermostat housing and thermostat.

Re-assemble in reverse order.

 

Is there an o-ring or does it seal with a gasket/sealant?

 

Use the rubber gasket, not a true O-ring. should have come with your new t'stat. Took 5 minutes on my car. Make sure car is cool, remove two 10mm bolts holding down the housing, remove old t'stat, install new, make sure rubber gasket is seated, reinstall housing. Mix 1 gal of antifreeze with 1 gal of distilled water, pour it in, start her up, top it off.

 

where did you get the stat from. im in florida, so i think it would benefit me to have one on mine

 

Cool.... I like easy. Thanks

 

Would like to here your performance with the lower thermostat. Thanks,

 

I must be too old school..... What is the reason some of you feel the need to run the car "cold"? I run a 190 degree thermostat in my Chevelle (496ci 582hp) and let it warm up to 180 before I even start to drive it. I also let oil pressure drop to 60psi and get oil temp near180-190 also. The car produces more hp over 200 degrees up to 225 degrees. Have I missed something here?

 

Would like to here your performance with the lower thermostat. Thanks,

 

I agree... Also.... In a daily driven car or even a car that is raced from time to time it is very important for the oil temp to get above 212 deg.F in order to boil out any condensation. Condensation forms inside an engine just like it does on your beer glass as temps change. I race cars oil is changed frequently so it is not as important. The oil temps would get that high racing anyway. In a daily driver, especially short trips you reallly need to get the temp up as quickly as possible.
There is a difference between feeding cool air to the engine and a cold running engine. Cool air/denser fuel air charge...good.... cold engine... not good.

 

From what I've read here on the Forum over the last year the 160° thermo won't do anything by itself, you need the computer tune fan mod also. Even with these mods you will still reach over 212° under hard running.

The 160° is almost required for computer tuning, Corvettes of Westchester won't tune without it and every tune I've read about uses the lower temp thermostat and fan mod.

I would guess it's to allow quicker cool down between runs and possibly a slightly lower running temp when you are pushing it.

 

If you do a 160* stat you probably should bring the fans on earlier than the stock system. Otherwise there is a wide swing in temps. The C6 fan doesn't come on until 199* and then its only at 15% of its max fan speed. You can do a computer mod to bring them on earlier but even with the computer mod you can't bring the fan on any earlier than 192*.

I have a 160* stat and I installed a manual bypass switch so that I can turn the fan on at any time and keep a tight reign on my temps. In cruise my dash reads out around 178 or 180 and in town at stoplights I flip the fan on when it gets around 188 or so. A nice 10 degree spread is about all my motor ever sees -- except on those rare days when I'm at a road race course and the temps will go into the 190s. Not bad.

Norm

 

 

Be sure to coordinate the new fan temps.....with the new stat you install....otherwise the fans can turn on and never go off.....Also, too cool is no good both from a friction standpoint...and most important of all....Most vehicles go closed loop (fully warm fuel management) after 174 deg or so....It dosen't make sense to bring closed loop in earlier or later cause the engine "wants" it between 180 and 200...There's alot involved here. Recently, a guy came in with a 383 motor and an aftermarket radiator....pluss some un expected holes drilled in the stat which was in his electric waterpump....While tuning...I got all kinds of messed up results...and erratic performance....after wasting alot of fuel and time, I realized it was cold out and on the road the temp would drop down to under the closed loop temp.. Once we fixed the stat issue......the problem was gone......

Weather it's an old style 350...or an LSx motor.....best temp for all around usage is 180-200......Use a 160 stat....it works!

Hope this helps,
Chuck CoW

 

A car thermostat is operated by a wax pellet. As long as the wax is solid, the thermostat is closed. At a specific temperature determined by the specific wax composition, the wax melts and starts to expand. As it continues to expand, the bellows that contains it pushes against a spring and starts to open a valve which allows coolant to flow from the engine to the radiator. There is about a 15 degree range between fully closed and fully open. As long as the temperature is within this range, the thermostat has control of the water flow, and can regulate the engine's temperature, allowing more water flow as it heats, and less as it cools. This forms a feedback servo which tends to stablize the engine temperature within a narrow range.

Above this range, the thermostat is wide open and might as well not be there at all. Engine temperature is then not under the thermostat's control, and can swing wildly depending on engine load (more load more heat), cooling air flow (more air more radiator cooling), outside air temperature (colder air gives more cooling, hotter air gives less), etc.

So, for tight temperature control, very desireable for consistent engine operation, you want the thermostat to be in the middle of its operating range when the engine is at the desired operating temperature. As Chuck just said, closed loop control of fuel mixture doesn't kick in until 174 degrees, so you want the thermostat to be fully closed below that temperature. In other words, a 160 degree thermostat is too cold.

In fact, as Chuck said, you want the temperature to be tightly regulated somewhere in the 180 to 200 degree range for best performance (190 to 210 for best economy and emissions). Lets pick the middle of the performance range to allow the thermostat maximum control authority. Now since the thermostat has a 15 degree range between fully closed and fully open, we want to choose a thermostat that has a marked temperature 7.5 degrees below 190, or 182.5 degrees (for economy and emissions we'd choose 192.5 degrees instead).

If we do this, we could run the fans full blast all the time if we liked. The thermostat would still tightly regulate the coolant temperature by allowing more or less water to flow. In fact, that's how cars with engine driven fans always worked.

Of course now we have electric fans, and an ECM that can control their speed. But there is still an advantage to having the fan cranking full blast. It keeps the engine compartment cooler, and it allows the coolant the thermostat does allow to flow to more efficiently reject heat to the atmosphere (cooling efficiency is a 4th power function of the temperature difference between the heat source and the heat sink).

Odd how this all works out. The ideal emissions and economy temperature turns out to be about where the setpoint for the stock C6 thermostat is set. The performance set point is about where the factories set pre-emissions cars of the performance era (1960s muscle cars ran a 180 degree thermostat). Perhaps all that schooling the engineers get actually pays off.

 

I have the LPE 160o Thermostat with fan programming. I have found it has not effected the oil temp but has reduced the coolant temp. My normal operating oil temp is 220o and my normal coolant operating temp is between 190 and 200 even on 90+ degree days here in Dallas.