Thermostat housing with provision for temp sensor

The stock one has a flat spot on top that you can drill out and tap...thats what I did...my temp sensor for the fan came with a tap.

i bought one just plain black metal from Advance Auto for like $13 or somethin. It came with a tapped hole and plug where mustangsquared said he drilled his. the guy kept telling me that they didnt come that way until i asked him to go pull it off the shelf....sure enough it was tapped with a plug. now i have my stock gauge and my autometer both working.

either way will work, drilling the stock one, its like $20-30 for a tap kit. or $13 done. but you can always use the tap kit for other stuff.

Good luck
-Mike

ill trade u my tapped t-stat housing for your blown 306 if ud like

I got mine at pep boys and it was already drilled and tapped. I had accidently cracked my stock one.

napa. $11. its ****in beefy as hell too! heavy little fauker, had to massage it a little with the dremel just to get it to clear the vac advance on the distributer.

Autozone is where I got mines. I think it's 7 or 10 bucks. Temp sensor ready.

Just a thought guys - the location you're referring to is downstream of the thermostat. What that means is that any temperature reading there won't reflect what's going on in the engine until AFTER the t'stat opens. And if the t'stat should stick closed - you want your temp gauge to show you that. It won't have an easy time doing that if your temp. sender is located downstream of the t'stat in the housing. I'd put temp switches there to operate the fan, or I'd re-locate the stock sensor there if you want to run an aftermarket gauge. But I'd put the good gauge's sender in the manifold.

Michael Yount said:

Just a thought guys - the location you're referring to is downstream of the thermostat. What that means is that any temperature reading there won't reflect what's going on in the engine until AFTER the t'stat opens. And if the t'stat should stick closed - you want your temp gauge to show you that. It won't have an easy time doing that if your temp. sender is located downstream of the t'stat in the housing. I'd put temp switches there to operate the fan, or I'd re-locate the stock sensor there if you want to run an aftermarket gauge. But I'd put the good gauge's sender in the manifold.

Click to expand...

my thoughts exactly.

the stock gauge sucks anyhow. worst case you can relocate the stock sender to the rear of the lower intake. do put your good sender in the stock location.
good luck.

If any of you are in the market for quality temperature switches, I've got 3 Hotronics switches. I'd be happy to accept a reasonable offer on them through a PM. One is closed at 195F/open at 180F. The second is closed at 210F/open at 195F. And the third is closed at 220F/open at 205F. They're crazy expensive because they're street rod gear (beautiful aluminum bodies) - but since I put in the Delta Current variable current controller I've no use for them, so reasonable offers take the day.

The best way to go seems to be to mount the sensor either in the radiator, or the lower hose that feeds the engine. From my experience this works far better than mouting in the t-stat housing.

I found out when mouting a switch in the t-stat housing -- if the thermostat closes before the fan switches off, then the fan never switches off. The thermostat keeps the outlet temperatures too high for the switch to ever cool enough to shut off. The only way you can get around this is to run a really cool thermostat with a really warm temperature switch. I had to use a 200 degree switch with a 160 degree thermostat to get the fan to cycle properly. That is a really large and sucky temperature differential.

What I found to be an easy and cost-effective set up is to use a hayden 3652 controller. The kit costs $20 and works very well. The temp sensor installs into the radiator fins and is preset to turn on at 185F and off at 170F. I had to upgrade to a 70 AMP relay though. Works extremely well with an 180 degree thermostat.

The switch turns on as the engine temp starts to rise above 180 degrees and shuts off a little while after the engine drops back to 180 degrees. Since we're not measuring engine outlet temps - and instead radiator temps - the fan cools the radiator down to 170 degrees and shuts off every time. The thermostat then regulates the engine temperature to stay right at 180 degrees.

Michael, I have mine in the t-stat housing and it's kind of neat to see it jump off the bottom and show the temp when the t-stat first opens. Kind of a visual reference that the t-stat works...

Usually happens about the time I begin to wonder if the t-stat is going to work...