overheating

Why a 160 instead of 180? And when was the last time you flushed the rad?

The 180 will keep engine a little cooler for more power. Cylinder wall wear increases as operating temperatures are lowered. The stock Mustang thermostat is set for 196° Fahrenheit. Dropping to 180° will increase wear somewhat, and dropping to 160° or 140° will increase wear dramatically. I was lead to believe to never to use a thermostat below 180° Fahrenheit on an EFI car.

Turkey Sammich is right. But right now it doesnt matter - he's running hot. With these old cars, one has to use whatever components are needed to achieve a target temp (a 160 t-stat might have someone run at 200*F).

Are you sure you have all the air out of the system?
You really should have a real temp gauge to make any sort of diagnostic inferences from.

Good luck.

If you need a new radiator, go to rockauto.com and get the proliance one.

i just finished installing it last week. best investment i ever made. i paid like $170 shipped.

its a good idea to know what kind of temp #'s your actually getting , cant always trust the stock guages . I'm not sure if your have an aftermarket guage . I dont so I went to autozone , bought a real cheap one and just hooked it up temporarily by screwing in to the top of the thermostat housing , it was a numerical guage so it gave me a better idea of the temp .

Also you just did work to the cooling system to double check there is no air trapped in there , purge it .

I got a Godan 3 core radiator last year from pep boys and it cools like nobody business .

Good luck!

i have/had the same problem....put in a 180, flushed it --- still running hot, then i changed the rad cap, then today i put in a mechanical temp guage and i think it runs just fine now. it stays right at 190. is yours running hot while driving or sitting there? fan clutch maybe....

Don't forget the simple stuff. I just found 1/4" of HAIR covering most of my radiator fins on my '94 T-Bird this morning (didn't cure my overheating problem entirely, but it did help a bit). Loosen the top radiator mounts, tilt it back enough to look, and if it's covered in road debris, give the front of the radiator a gentle but thorough cleaning (I used a toothbrush to loosen the stuff and then sucked it away with a Shop-Vac).

Other possibilities:

- Clogged coolant passages (possibly from someone using a stop-leak product that accumulated somewhere in a clump);
- Leaking intake manifold passages (coolant burns off/evaporates before you can see it);
- Fan clutch defective/dead, or wrong-rotation fan clutch installed;
- 160* T-stat is about the same as not having a T-stat installed, at all - can result in overheating conditions, as well;

Be careful if you wind up having to replace the radiator, itself, and you spring for a heavy-duty unit. The brass/copper radiator from Autozone and similar places listed as an HD 3-core unit is actually a TWO-core radiator, now - you're still paying the price for a 3-core, but getting screwed for a regular 2-core that Go-Dan believes is "sufficient."