stupid thermostat

[koukidough]

okay I have gone through three thermostats. They keep crapping out on me so I decided to remove it permanantly. Before I do that I want know all the downsides to having it off. All I know is the flow will be better and I dont have to deal with thermostats again.

[projectRDM]

Buy an OE thermostat, install it correctly. There's no reason to keep replacing them unless you're doing something wrong.

Removing it entirely will allow too much coolant flow and keep the car from properly warming up. On a cold day, engine tolerances won't be met since the block is still cold, and the water doesn't have enough time to absorb heat within the block anyway.

[koukidough]

oaky so its summer in socal and the lowest temp at night should be 70 degrees and 90+ degrees day. You think its okay for me to leave it off for the summer?

[drifter808]

i had my car with no thermostat for awhile. i dont recommend it. yeah the engine will run colder but you'll get bad gas mileage and the engine wont perform to its fullest. atleast thats what it felt like after i installed it again. i wrote a thread about this awhile back

also how do they keep breaking on you?

[koukidough]

they dont open enough for coolant to flow through. It works for awhile but then fails. Maybe I'm just unlucky and got defective ones. I know my water pump is running fine, my heater gets hot. Btw I have my KA motor lying around in the garage. You think that thermostat will fit my sr and work? Cuz my KA never had a problem. Thanks!

drifter808,
how would I get bad gas mileage? Is it because of the downtime of warming the car up?

[drifter808]

well at least for my SR the ecu would read that the engine is still cold and dump more fuel to warm it up. So the car ran really rich and would bog out sometimes. After i put it back in i saw a difference pretty quick.

[Dousan_PG]

yeah KA one fits
get a nismo or something
its cheap.
under 100 bucks.

[drifter808]

i think i got a stock one for SR i'll sell for 25 shipped. works fine

edit: nope its for my truck.

[koukidough]

Thanks for the help guys, I will try the KA one for now and see if it wont permanently close on me. If that fails I'll just "finally" shell out $$$ for a high end Nismo thermostat.

[koukidough]

update** well the KA thermostat did not work well for me, it had a little more flow than the stock SR thermostat but still I overheated at high revs. Finally took the thermostat completely out and now it runs like a champ. My idle went from 800rpm before to a now 900rpm. I tried to make it overheat by redlining it all around town with A/C on, temp stays exactly where its supposed to be. Also having heard that it takes awhile for it to get warm is not true (atleast on an SR). My car got idle temp in a little over 1 minute.

[kensreliableb18b]

ka and sr thermo are basically the same as stated before. and as for it not taking long to warm up (it applies to all motors, including sr): you're in long beach? yea, its hot today. wait for a cold day. then you'll know what we mean.

[kensreliableb18b]

uh, wait...what coolant temp sensor are you using?

[projectRDM]

Exactly. On a hot day, of course it will warm up quick. Judging water temp by the OE gauge is a sure fire way to kill the engine anyway. It may say it's up to operating temp, but midway on the gauge is anywhere between 150-245 degrees. 150 is too cold, 245 is blowing a head gasket.

[caall99]

when i took out my thermostat completely, i got cooler running temperatures, but unfortunately too cool. the engine kept trying to idle up, because i never hit normal operating temp. it also ran pig rich and spat black crap out the exhaust. because of this i don't recommend running without one.