Yesturday I had my thermostat housing replaced, and I noticed that today my car is running much hotter than before I took it in. When warm, the gauge use to read half way between 1/4 and 1/2. Not it hovers at, or goes above 1/2 way, and I can even feel the diffrence between my firewall. I live in SC, and right now up until the end of summer it will be in the 90's everyday. My question is, should I just take the thermostat out for the summer, and put it back in when winter rolls back around? Is that a safe thing to do, and will it change anything other than just the flow of water into the engine? Thanks

 

Make sure the T-stat was put in the correct way (nose pointing up/to the radiator) and that it's a 180F not 190/195F or installed backwards. Running a 160F T-stat or non actually hurts the cars performance.

 

Dan, you want to leave that thermostat in there. They are desiged to open after the engine reches operating temperature. Now, you say the engine was not overheating before the new thermostat was put in? If that is the case, maybe the mechanic put it in backwards or changed to a higher temp thermostat than a 180. And, the spring and nose of the thermostat goes in first so they are pointing down into the block.

 

Okay, well I'll have to talk with my mechanic when they open tomorrow. I swear I had this problem before and I had a 130, or 160, something like that put in, and that worked fine. We'll see....

 

The problem with not having a thermostat at all is that the water moves through the radiator too fast and doesn't have proper time to cool down so you will actually run hotter without a thermostat. Make sure you have a 180 in there. If you are not sure, then take it out and buy a new one. They are cheap.

 

When i replaced my thermo the same thing happend to me....i exchanged it to be safe and payed closer attention when i installed it the second time.After that it ran fine.
+1 with soaring, dont take it out, you need to just fix whats wrong.

 

If you run too cool also, it causes excessive wear of the cylinder/rings. This is a metallurgy problem, the cylinder and rings have metals with properties designed to give the longest life at a certain temperature, if you get too cool the metal will actually wear faster. I always run a 195 in mine, and even in Bakersfield in the summer when it gets HOT outside, my temp guage never goes much over 1/2 way, which is fine. You're better off seeing the temp somewhere in the middle of the guage or a bit over/under. If it's not actually overheating though, I wouldn't worry. It sounds like you prolly have a 195 stat in there, which should be fine, a bit hotter will promote better combustion, and as long as you don't detonate from having too hot a combustion chamber, the extra heat in there will give you a bit more power and better mileage. But whatever you do, son' run without a thermostat, that can cause all sorts of trouble

 

FWIW, the '65 factory service manual lists two thermostats, a low and high temperature unit. The low temperature unit is more or less a 160* model. My Mustang was running at the top end of the guage with the 192* thermostat supplied with my Ford Racing crate motor, verified with a mechanical guage. The dynotuner recommended a 160* thermostat, which not coincidentally, is the only temperature carried at my local speed shop.