What * thermostat does a 1993 LX come stock with? I'm trying to find out if my thermostat and/or sending unit is bad. My car's thermostat is telling me that my car runs a steady 160-ish degrees or lower. THe other day I hit some BADD traffic and my **** rocketed up to 200-ish because I was very low on coolant. Now I'm trying to figure out if my thermostat is reading ~20 degrees lower than it should be and I was really running 220+ or if it's reading correctly and my car just runs real cool.
Thermostat?
- Thread starter Mysterio
- Start date
Black 93 Fox
Active Member
1EVIL88VERT
New Member
sounds like the t-stat is stuck open....do you feel pressure in the upper hose when motor is cold? and like the other guy said find out where coolant is going
The upper radiator hose is stiff when the engine isn't running. Haven't even touched it when the motor was running cold/hot. I'm not 100% sure what my guage is reading, I BELIEVE it's reading about 150-170*.. Here's a picture for reference. This is what it heats up to and continues to run at steadily:
I was also already aware of a small coolant leak, just haven't honed down on from where yet. My main issue right now was trying to figure out if my thermostat is reading the right temperature so I can find out if i'm running cold/hot. Trying to diagnose exactly what's going on with that then i'll find the leak.
I was also already aware of a small coolant leak, just haven't honed down on from where yet. My main issue right now was trying to figure out if my thermostat is reading the right temperature so I can find out if i'm running cold/hot. Trying to diagnose exactly what's going on with that then i'll find the leak.
Black 93 Fox
Active Member
If it doesnt really get any hotter then that I would think the t-stat is stuck open which it does when the t-stat goes south. Try replacing it with a 180 and see what happens.
Black 93 Fox
Active Member
I bought a 180* Thermostat.. Installed it (I had a 160* in???? I guess the guy I bought it from must have put in a 160 since he lived in vegas? I dont know)... And the car was still running colder than it should so my Dad put his thermometer on the heater hose and it was reading ~175 so I went and bought a new sending unit and put it in and now as far as I can tell my guage is reading where it should be. It's reading slightly above the 3rd line up.. Dead Middle is 200* so Im figuring its reading at abut 180 where it should be. Thanks everyone for their input 
IMHO trying to make diagnoses from the stock gauge is not a good idea. You made a leap of interpolation faith that I would not. I know my stock gauge is off by 45*F at times.Mysterio said:And the car was still running colder than it should so my Dad put his thermometer on the heater hose and it was reading ~175 so I went and bought a new sending unit and put it in and now as far as I can tell my guage is reading where it should be. It's reading slightly above the 3rd line up.. Dead Middle is 200* so Im figuring its reading at abut 180 where it should be. Thanks everyone for their input
Good luck.
HISSIN50 said:
I knew the stock guage was off that was one of the problems. However it did have the wrong thermostat in there so I fixed both problems and now the guage seems to be reading pretty accurately. I'm just using it as a guess-timate to see if my car is running at the correct temp or running hotter than it should be. And now after changing the sending unit and thermostat it looks like the guage is reading pretty accurately.
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