Co t-stat temp

[jdogg4]

Thermostat 195

Been searching the tech sections and I'm just not liking what I'm finding or not finding over there.

Quick background.

This is the girlfriends Jeep. We took her jeep one night to go eat and I noticed after 5 min of driving it wasn’t getting warm. That’s when she informed me that it’s been doing that for some time now. We get home I check the fluid level and ended up poring all but a few drops of a full bottle into the radiator. Ok took it out for a test drive and bam Heat again. I watched it for about 2 weeks and she said the heat was working good again and it wasn’t leaking at all.
Well on the way to work the jeep buzzer went off and the temp spiked on the guage. Smart girl she pulled over right away and turned it off. She let it just steam there for a bit and called me. I went and picked her up. The cap was loose and spinning and fluid was all over the engine bay. Hoses looked fine and it was only leaking from that cap side of the radiator. Got it towed to a buddies heated insulated garage to work on it. The Jeep is a 98Xj 4.0 I-6. the stock T-stat is a 195* right well calling around I can’t find a 195. Most of the places have 180. the few 195* I found were the way cheap/generic ones ar like 2.99 or 3.99 well the stock one is around 11 bucks do I risk going with the cheap 3 dollar one or keep hunting down the good 195. Or just toss in the 180. What kind of results to guys in CO have with the 180.
She wants a new jeep grand Cherokee here soon, so a temp fix is ok I guess, but I don’t like doing it that way and don’t want to tear back into it for a cheap 3 dollar part that fails.
I got the flush kit going on it because the radiator has nasty crud in it as do the lines a bit.

 

[xj-grin]

I have run both t-stats (the 180 and the 195), and in my 99 (OBDII), the computer seemed to compensate for any change made (i.e. it rant at @ 200 regardless of the tstat. In my 91, it ran noticably cooler with the 180, but I suffered from worse milage and less power. The FI engine is designed to run at 200*, and it is not really efficient below that -- find the OEM 195 and stick with it. If the engine is overheating with the 195, there is something else wrong, and a lower tstat will only be a bandaid...

 

[jdogg4]

Thanks between this one and in the OEM section I think I just need to keep hunting down the OEM 195 one.

 

[jdogg4]

What a SOB to drain that radiator. I couldn't get my hand on the drain valve then when I did get up there, there is no way of turning it at all. I just pulled the air box and pulled off the lower radiator hose. Other than that the swap went fine. Couldn’t get the stock OEM temp 195 so I just got one from the part store then we drilled a small hole in it to bleed the air. Put it all back together added the cleaner flush stuff to the system and with in 5 min it was running warm air again and then with in 10 min the system was up to temp and running just fine. Then when it came time to flush and drain the system wow that sucked. After work I’m off to get some dry absorb and garage floor cleaner. Well that and the car wash to clean the engine off and the outside of the car. I got that old rusty antifreeze crap all over it.