running with no thermostat??

is this possible?? ive been having similar issues as sammy over the last week or so, so i too rolled up my sleeves and went to work. after draining everything, i pull off the water outlet elbow, and found.....nothing. no t-stat retainer, no t-stat, no anything. just an empty elbow on one side, and a motor on the other.

whats goin on??

 

someone may have taken it out thinking they were solving their heating issues....
the retainers rust away over the years, maybe they couldn't find one.
I'd put it back together using the retainer and 180* t/stat

 

yea i've got a 180* ready to go. just gotta hunt down a retainer i guess.

thanks

 

The motor has to heat up to a warm temp to operate efficiently. I wouldnt continue to run without one. x2 it was probably taken out for a fast fix, not knowing it was creating a problem down the road.

 

Yeah with no T-stat, you can get way to much flow for the radiator to work, so you are just pumping hot water back into the engine. Years ago i experimented around with some restrictors or what ever the term is, in SBC's to get things working right on an old truck of mine. They are basically a round piece of metal with a hole in the middle, you can get them in different diameters to adjust flow rate. I really don't even remember why we were doing it then, but i seem to remember that it would overheat with any thermostat we put in, so we went that route, but that was on a 383 with a really wild cam and alot of other stuff going on.

 

If i recall my retainer is just a piece of old radiator hose

 

I replaced a missing one, got it from Walcks4wd.com

 

picked up a retainer today, hopefully ill find some time tomorrow to put humpty dumpty back together again

 

so apparently i was wrong. the PO *did* have a t-stat retainer in there. but the fins that fold the t-stat into place had snapped off, and the rest of the retainer is corroded into place. awesome. :evil:

 

fixed it. now it purrrrrrs right at 170*