I'm getting my cooling inline before my turbo, flushed radiator, water wetter, parallel fan deal ect., now the thermostat, I can't find a 160 or 170 thermostat, so I was considering guttin mine and just using like a restrictor. I did this on my boat it had a 454 and it worked great. keep in mind im in south florida, it gets friggen hot and rarely gets below 50 in the winter. Has anyone done this, is there an ideal temp to be running, or is cooler better?

 

Your car shouldn't run colder than 180*, pretty sure that's not good for it. If it will run stable around 190-200 that would be ideal. You can get a 180* tstat at napa for sure as well as advanced auto. Gutting your tstat isn't a good idea if you want your car to heat up like it should. If you're having overheating issues you should look into the godspeed radiators before gutting your Tstat. $160 shipped for an all aluminum 2" radiator is pretty good.

 

+1. Several years ago I tried removing the thermostat on another car of mine. It took a long time for it to warm up (if ever) and it did not run as well.

A boat engine has a higher steady state load on it than a car does so the water might have been warm enough and the engine under enough thermal stress to keep the coolant warm despite the lack of thermostat.

 

True Dat^^^

You want your water in the 180 degree area with the stock ECU controlling. With something like megasquirt, you can adjust your parameters to run a little colder, but the OEM ECU is designed to fuel and time based on temperature of the coolant.

Even running a reroute(which I would recommend highly), your temps are best maintained with the OEM 2 stage thermostat.

 

running a 160° thermostat will not make the can run cooler, it will just open up the thermostat sooner, slowing the warmup. Eventually the coolant will come up to normal operating temps. So I see no benefit from running a colder thermostat.

 

good info thanks guys