VKZ24 wrote:CaptainRat wrote:John is exactly right. A thermostat is an unnecessary risk to run in racing. If that $3 part gets stuck closed, you're done for. However, taking it out will result in poor cooling as well.
I take your point, but do you guys often have a thermostat stick closed or something? I mean a brand new Stant t-stat is like $8 for our car and I can't see a reason it would fail in just 13 hours of use. Of course it 'could' fail, but I've not seen or had one fail on me personally. Also you could buy the 'Fail Safe' t-stat which will stick open instead of closed if it fails. I really wonder why they all aren't made that way.
I had 2 brand new thermostats fail on 2 different cars in the span of 2 months earlier this year. On both of them the bridges failed and they got stuck closed. Had never seen failures like that before, but suddenly Murphy came calling.
Normally I boil them under pressure to see when they open, and have found about 15-20% don't work correctly.
On the flip side, especially for cars running carburetors, the temp effects the air/fuel tuning so I don't like mine to run below 180. Steady and warm seems better and more consistent than wide temp swings.
Unfortunately I run an English car in Lemons, so none of this really even matters; It going to overheat and die soon in glorious fashion no matter what we do. That should be fun.
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