160* Thermostat, why?

Let's go Mountaineers,

Aaron

supposedly, every bit of energy in the fuel either goes out the exhaust, into the engine block or out the crankshaft, what about the gas you spill filling the tank??

with a hotter thermostat/engine block, the heat transfer into the cooling system is slightly reduced so a bit more energy is available to go out the crankshaft

thats the b/s they gave me years ago

Effects of overpopulation started producting a by-product called smog. It was found that the leading culprit that was leading to this effect was the burning of fossil fuels and that internal combustion engines were the main offender.

The EPA was created by the federal government, which set up regulations and goals to reduce these emissions. By law, manufactures had to comply with these emmision-reducing regulations and started experimenting with ways in which to get this accomplished.

Well, guess what? It was found that by running an engine hotter, not only were emmisions reduced by getting a more complete burn, but also more power was squeezed out of a given volume of fuel and surprisingly, engines started lasting longer.

The engines were actually "healther" if run at higher temperatures.

Allan

I'm sure that most guys will disagree with this, but it's what I do nonetheless. I don't use a thermostat at all in my 1973 Ford 2000 gas tractor. When I started working on cars back in the 1950's in Ohio, no one used a thermostat in the summer. Thermostats were only installed in the Fall so that the heaters would work more efficiently. Everyone removed the thermostats in the Spring and ran until Fall without one.

I've heard all of the arguments about condensation in the engine, oil temperature, incomplete combustion etc. However, in my experience, I don't see that any of those things happen. The temperature inside the engine is in hundreds of degrees. Having the water going through the cooling passages a few degrees hotter or cooler doesn't make enough difference to talk about. The oil in my engine gets very hot without a thermostat - just touch the dipstick some time. I don't have black smoke coming out of the exhaust, etc.

I never have to worry about air trapped in the system, and I've never had a thermostat failure in my tractor (since it doesn't have one).

So, I've "exposed my soft tissue" on this matter, but I'm probably not going to change my mind at this point anyway.

Good luck,

Tom in TN

Rod

You are just kidding, right? And pulling our legs?

Geral J.

I would suspect they tried to keep the gassers a little cooler, even when worked hard so they didn't "detonate" as easily, preventing piston damage.

I have seen engines run without a thermostat.

One overheated til one was installed?

One was sludged up so bad it took three men with pry bars to get the intake manifold off. The owner was using Pennzoil, STP, and making only short trips. Not sure what the real problem was but that engine was completely full.

The rest had no problems whatsoever.

My first car ran better with a 195* than a 180*. Smoother, alot more "pull".

I will monitor the temps on this tractor closely. I have a lot invested and REALLY don't want to make a mistake... I would like to run a hotter thermostat, but likely will leave everything as it is due to what I have changed already (7.1:1 to 9.1:1). Let's get this sorted out first.