Yeah I am a horrible mechanic and I had no problem doing this. I installed a new mechanical temp guage at the same time and am way more confident with the truck now. Engine is reading a steady 170 now instead of jumping up at idle like it did with the stock guage. Makes me feel way more confident about taking longer trips.
I bought Sunpro guages but would definitely get Autometer if I had to do it over. I also had to order the metric adapter for the temp and oil senders and use teflon thread sealing tape to get the temp sender to seal properly.
One problem I did have was that my paper gasket was too small. Not sure if I have an aftermarket housing or if the local parts guy in Vista just sent me the wrong size. Anyway I was able to re-use the rubber gasktet that was already in there without any leaking problems. Pulling the old therm out, it didn't have the small circular shaped gasket on top and I think my heater is working better now that I replaced that.
I will say that this was a super messy job. Even though the petcock on my radiator was in good shape and has a cut out to drain. The liquid squirts out so hard that it hit a bunch of components and then dripped in about 8 different locations. I put a bunch of newspaper everywhere and buckets under the biggest drips. This made it super easy to clean up...just mop up with the news paper and throw away.
Does anyone have a part number for the thicker gasket that goes in between the two halves of the tstat housing? I'm having the same problem others have with the two halves not mating together all the way with the rubber o-ring installed.
I have cleaned all surfaces and they are level but I still have about a 1mm or so gap left IIRC.
Didn't keep the bag with the part number, but the dealer can get them for you. It's a thick paper or fiber gasket and it works with the top rubber gasket, no leaks.
Thanks 1911 - what confused me is I had a thin paper gasket that I thought was OEM. I ordered another (forgot that I did) and it came in yesterday - thicker rubber OEM...who knew???
I'm doing this job again already. Blown head gasket so I am going to replace the aftermarket themostat gaskets with the Japanese ones I got with my kit. Kind random but it came with a cork type center gasket, anyone seen these. It is similar in size to the thicker rubber one but seems to be made out of cork? Would you still use rtv with this gasket....I am assuming so. I have two options the cork one or the regular old paper one, which one would you go with if you had the option?
Yeah my rubber one worked good too but is a little old and flaky at this point. Cork thicker one similar in thickness to the rubber one or the thin paper one? Cork needs RTV?
I need to do this job tomorrow. I have all 3 OEM gaskets, rubber ring for top of the stat, rubber oval gasket and the housing to block rubber gasket. Couple of questions...
1) I will use high tem RTV for both sides of the gaskets? For both the oval and housing to block?
2) What do I want to torque these too? Both the housing halves together and housing to block torque specs?
3) PO put studs in the housing so I don't believe I need to use antisieze? I guess I will anyways just to be on the safe side.
I just replaced my 1978 thermostat this weekend. We used red high temp RTV on the paper OEM gasket to the engine block and the paper OEM gasket between the two halves. No need to use the thick rubber gasket I purchased from NAPA between the two halves because it had enough room to seat and seal with the paper OEM gasket. We set the smaller round rubber gasket that came with the NAPA thermostat on top of the thermostat, no RTV used here. Replaced the bolts with SST bolts from the hardware store and still used some gray anti-seize on them, even though they are SST. We let each coating of RTV dry for about an hour before assembling, hand tightened everything and then waited another hour before tightening everything down. The RTV says no coolant for 24hrs so I will fill her back up tonight after getting both hoses re-installed.
What is the hose lubricant product that people use?