Jeff CA
Senior Member
My friend helped me install a 180 thermo today. A couple of surprises to be on the lookout for. The water neck had paint overspray in it from the factory. It was starting to flake off and get particles in the cooling system. Fortunately, my truck doesn't have many miles on it, and we caught it early. We used sandpaper to get all the loose stuff off.
My friend came up with a good trick to allow the coolant to rise and burp after you start the engine when you're done and are letting the engine warm up. He cut the bottom off a 1 gal milk carton, wrapped electrical tape a couple of times around the mouth of the jug to expand its outside diameter a little. The mouth fit snugly into the top of the radiator and not one drop of coolant leaked! The contraption allowed the coolant to expand and burp then sink back down into the radiator. Tip: squeeze the radiator hose several times with your fingers to expedite the burping process.
Another tip is that coolant goes everywhere when you yank the hose and again when you pull the original thermo, so plan accordingly! And this was after we let some coolant out before we started.
Another shocking find from the factory was that the radiator hose was only on the water neck just enough for the clamp to clamp onto it. The hose was not bottomed out on the stop as far as it could've gone. When we re-assembled, we seated it all the way down the neck to its stop.
I also added RP Purple Ice. Using the EVIC, steady state temps are in the 18x range. More power from the cooler heads now?
My friend came up with a good trick to allow the coolant to rise and burp after you start the engine when you're done and are letting the engine warm up. He cut the bottom off a 1 gal milk carton, wrapped electrical tape a couple of times around the mouth of the jug to expand its outside diameter a little. The mouth fit snugly into the top of the radiator and not one drop of coolant leaked! The contraption allowed the coolant to expand and burp then sink back down into the radiator. Tip: squeeze the radiator hose several times with your fingers to expedite the burping process.
Another tip is that coolant goes everywhere when you yank the hose and again when you pull the original thermo, so plan accordingly! And this was after we let some coolant out before we started.
Another shocking find from the factory was that the radiator hose was only on the water neck just enough for the clamp to clamp onto it. The hose was not bottomed out on the stop as far as it could've gone. When we re-assembled, we seated it all the way down the neck to its stop.
I also added RP Purple Ice. Using the EVIC, steady state temps are in the 18x range. More power from the cooler heads now?
Ive always ran low temp T-stats in my old muscle cars but never put them in the late models, always figured it would mess with the computer. only one I ever did it to was my pre-runner ranger but I also did alot of other little tricks to that bypassing and rerouting coolant lines and adding resistors and such into the sensors....
