new thermostat. now what!?

platinumsc7

Registered User
Hey everyone, I just put new belts,hoses, and a 180 thermostat in my car today. I was having overheating problems with the 195. The car seems to warm up faster now, and the needle slowly creeps up to the "m" on the temp gauge. The fan never turned on either. ( it is a new fan motor ) I was thinking about an adjustable fan relay, but I'm not familiar with them. Does anybody have any suggestions, or know how to go about hooking up that relay. I also thought I heard about cutting one of the wires to the rad. fan and hooking up a switch or something? Thanks, and sorry my message is so long! Brian
 
the reason this is happeningl, is because the fans are still at the factory settings. what you should do for now, is wire a switch inline of your #14 wire from your IRCM. this is located behind the passenger side headlight. when you cut this wire, the fan will be on any time the key is in the "on" position. the switch will just allow you to change it back to normal setting at any time.

i just installed a 160 thermostat, and did the above mod, and my car has only touched the N once, and that was after 3 hours on the freeway cruising at 80 in 95 degree heat. i usually cruise around town at the line. i love it, and so does my car.

XR7 dave has a great cool fan switch tutorial over on TBSCEC.com, but it's under revision right now.

-matt
 
Fans..

I second the cutting of wire 14! I have mine cut and my fan runs anytime my car is set to the 'on' position. I also replaced the t-stat with a 180 recently when I did the fans. I ran a switch to control the highspeed fan (make sure to follow diagram you need a diaode in there), and this way the low speed fan always runs, but if for some reason I feel the need I can turn on the highspeed also. While I was doing the stock fan, I decided to add an IC fan, which is very nice. I have run the car twice once w/o the IC fan on and once with it on and the IC tubes are a touch cooler, to me its almost a seat of the pants difference. Hot day, cold day there seems to be a difference. G'luck.
 
160 degree thermostat! Come one guys, the car has to get to operating temperature! 160 will really be too cold and the engine computer may never pull out of warm up mode.

And a thermostat isn't going to fix an overheat issue. If the thermostat was opening at 195 before and overheat is considered 212, well a 180 won't make it any better. (Though 180 is recommended)

Not ragging on anyone, just trying to point out some basic facts.

Yep, force low speed fan on always and see how that helps.

If you are really concerned I would get a actual temp gauge to verify numbers as the one in the dash is fairly unspecific and could be wrong.
 
I went with an adjustable relay. I never let mine go past the "N". Its a fairly easy install. They come with instructions, it took about 15 minutes to install.

The great things about the adjustable ones are you can set it to a higher heat for the winter to get more heat in the cabin, and set it to a lower heat for the summer.
 
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