superchip thermostat

Both of the items you've mentioned above are pretty worthless in terms of performance gain.

They used the 160* T-stat in order to run more timing.

You could have advanced the timing yourself and saved the cost of the chip.

160* t-stats in these cars are known to cause issuse with preventing the EEC from going into closed loop or causing the EEC to constantly transition between open and closed loop. About the only way you would know that this is happening on a pretty much stock Mustang, is that you'll get really crappy gas mileage.

When the EEC is in open loop, the car is running from pre-set fuel tables. Input from the majority of the sensors is disregarded and no mnor adjustments are made by the EEC for power or performance.

So.... With a good functioning cooling system, your Ummm.. "chip", and your 160* t-stat, you are likely tossing out any performance gain you expected to get from that chip plus a little extra.

If your cooling system is on the slightly less efficient side, you may be into a good tempurature range regarless of the t-stat and the EEc is doing fine. In that case, all you've gained is a little timing. Again, that's something you could have done yourself without the chip.

To summarize... 99.9% of "off-the-shelf" performance chips are junk wannabes for Fox EEC-IV cars.

^^What he said


AND

Coolant temps below ~180F have been shown to increase the wear in the cylinder bore. The cooler the coolant temp, the more the bores wear.

Assuming the stock gauge is working properly, your temp gauge should be in the dead middle of the range, or maybe slightly below.

A 180 or 195F stat will usually get you in this range.


jason