Hey everyone I was talking to the Manager at autozone last night about my over heating problem i get with my car he said I should drill little holes in my thermostat and I would be seeing improvements. I was wondering if you guys ever heard or tried this before. what do you guys think?

 

id say if you have a 195 degree thermostat just go to a 180, drilling holes is an old hot rodder trick to allow more flow but wont be enough to fix overheatingbut id say go with a lower temp thermostat if your looking to fix overheating

 

Never heard of it,. Not sure what you would be accomplishing. You need a bigger radiator, at least a 6 blade fan some wetter water, a shroudand an overflow.

 

alrighty thanks would u recommend a radiator that will do the job

 

It depends of how much money you are willing to spend. You can get a 3 or 4 row copper/brass or you can get a 2 row aluminum one. If you want a really good one, get a Griffin or a BeCool aluminum. There is another popular one, but the brand sips my mind right now. Something Dyne. Maybe the younger minds can help out here.The brand doesn't really matter on the copper/brass core rads.

 

Drilling a single hole in the top of the thermostat is to help burp the system. The amount of flow you'd gain from a 1/8" hole in your thermostat isn't enough to prevent overheating.

A fan shroud would be very beneficial to help with overheating.

 

Cooling a Mustang V8 is a 40 year old problem........if you are going to drill holes in the thermostat why not just remove it completely. Best way is a larger radiator.

 

The radiator is higher than the motor so it is self burping. drilling holes in the thermostat will do nothing but give-up control of the coolant temp.

When is it overheating? At idle? On the interstate? Just driving?

Do you have the rubber seals at the front and rear of engine compartment? If not you are getting a high pressure behind the radiator that is stopping air flow. M-G "A"'s dwere famous for lettting in air through what was supposed to be an underhood exhaust port at theback of the hood when in reality this port let air in at 60 mph and above and the car overheated.

If your thermostat is stuck open you will run fine in town but overheat at speed and not be able to cool back done under it's own power because the water is passing through the radiator too fast.

What about a thermostatic fan...do you have one? The guy who bought my 75 v8 replaced the radiator, thermostat, and water pump before he checked the fan. If you overheat in traffic but it cools down at speed...look to the fan.

 

I wish that were the case. I've had a 'self-burping' 302 crack open pretty quickly. I run a 1/8" hole in every thermostat I install, and warm up time does not suffer, nor does the ability to keep the engine cool. Which means the thermostat is working just fine.

 

+1 on the burp,,, and
+1+1+1 on the shroud,,,, the shroud will make a huge difference, more than most folks think.