Ok. I don't understand the point of *upgrading* your thermostat. I noticed in this months SCC there is someone who did this, and I know a kid from my school who did it to his Camaro SS. He says it keeps the engine running cooler, which i'm sure it does, but i'm not sure what this accomplishes. If the engine needed to run cooler, wouldn't the factory put in a cooler thermostat? I was under the impression that the engine needed to reach a certain temperature in order to reach full efficiency and to keep it hot enough for crap to not start building up. I suppose if you had cooling problems, then running too cool would be much preferable to running too hot, but they are touting them as a performance upgrade.

anyone have any ideas? A waste of time/money, or does it really benefit the engine somehow?

trey

 

If the cars are running other modifications in their engine that need to be cooled down (i.e. Turbocharger/Supercharger, etc.) Then the stock intercooling is not enough. Too Much Heat = Power Killer. You can control how cool your car gets...im not sure how controllable how hot your car gets though, if you work your car hard everyday, its gonna get some heat...its how much intercooling you put in there thats gonna be the difference between anywhere from 5-15hp (depending on mods, NA or Turbo, etc.)

 

Dude ... You lost me??

Anyways, running a cooler thermostat. Basically a thermostat is a door. At a certain temperature the door opens to allow full flow of the coolant through the radiator rather than just the block. On a V8 application there are passages in the intake manifold to allow the coolant to cross over to the other bank of cylinders. These passages heat the intake manifold which in turn heats your incoming air charge. You are also lowering the temperature in the waterjacket around your cylinders. More heat is less power. Think of it as a CAI in a sense. By changing the temperature range of the thermostat, you lower the point at which the coolant starts flowing through the radiator, thus keeping things cooler, improving the general performance.

Does this work on inline fours? Somewhat, but not as much as one may think. There is no coolant flowing through your intake manifold. Sure, the TB has the flow-through, but it is not enough to warrant a change of the thermostat. In this case you would only benefit from the lowered temperature around the cylinder liners. You can certainly change the temperature range on your thermostat. You will not harm your car by doing so. But in the case of a four cylinder, I doubt you will see the benefits anywhere near what you get in a V6 or V8 application.

 

Sorry had just got done with an 11 hour shift at work...and found out i might not have gotten paid for my time in, but I was basically just saying that cooler is better then hotter.

 

In boosted applications, the Beta runs Hot. At least mine does. With the stock thermostat, and the engine fans set to run *normally*, my cooling fans kick on about every 60 seconds, and run for 1-2 minutes before shutting off, then they cycle back on after 60 seconds. When driven hard/lots of boost, it is even worse, they are on basically constantly.

To Improve the engine cooling, I setup the A* condensor fan(Passenger side) to run all the time. The drivers side (normal cooling fan) runs as needed. (on at 205 degrees, off at 192 degrees). This keeps the engine MUCH cooler. The cooling fan only kicks on now durring hard driving/high boost runs.

A lower tempature thermostat, should, in theory, prevent the coolant from getting so hot, and, again in theory, allow me to run the cooling fans *normally* again.

Low temp thermostats are a BAD IDEA in very cold climates, or on 100% stock or mainly stock cars. a 5 degree cooler thermostat wouldn't kill your engine, but it wouldn't help much. Here in southern california, I plan on running a 160 degree thermostat in the hopes of keeping the engine cool, and the fans off!