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Thanks all for th good diagnosis, and here's some detail for anyone else facing the same:
It being Sunday and me wanting this done, I had to use a Stant-made thermostat from NAPA, no air-purge valve, but it works fine.
Kind of a pain to get at, and lots of cleanup to do. AND I broke the hose from PCV to turbo air intake, and had to sleeve it with a piece of copper tubing, and silicone to seal.
But it's had a 100-mile round trip test and the needle stays at about 1/4 way up the scale, as if it was painted there.
The thermostat in there was brass, made in England - - original? Dunno. But they tend not to get changed on these cars and if you go to do yours DEFINITELY get the rubber sealing gasket too. The one in there on the two of these I have done now was hard as a rock and deformed by corrosion, in each case. NOT re-usable.
Also, the square groove in the head where it sits down in was badly corroded on both cars, and took a lot of scraping out. I even used a bit of sharp rock to grind some of the oxidized metal away till it looked pretty good. One deep pit there so I put some silicone sealer in before replacing thermostat.
The thermostat cover-connecting pipe to the radiator hose was also corroded. I scraped and filed the hose connection, and the flat face sealing to the block, but still some pits remained.
And the two little pipe ends where the coolant lines connect to the throttle body were pretty nasty with corrosion, and I scraped and sanded those too.
I had to scrape out the oxidized metal from the inside of the ends of the hoses, till they looked like black rubber again.
Also, for clearance, I removed the big formed elbow at intake of throttle body, and the hose that runs down from the copper pipe set into top of throttle body (TOP end only removed, on that).
Worst part is probably the two M6 bolts on back side of the thermostat cover, that attach a bracket supporting the heater return pipe. Best tool for getting them out is probably a 10mm Gearwrench ratcheting box end wrench. But my set was 5 miles away. The one toward psgr. side is almost impossible to get at. I left that out on reassembly. And both are probably 15 mm long, but only need to be 5mm long to do the job. The too-long bolt called for many extra positionings of the open end wrench, to get all the way out. Cussing only helps so much in a case like that.
Second worst was breaking that hose - - it cracked thru just at the point where the section over to the PCV nipple is vulcanized into the heavier hose that goes down to the turbo intake, above the section that has the water line thru it. It happened bcause you need to take it off the PCV nipple and snake it back out from behind the head; I didn't think to worry about shearing it off. Don't be rough with yours.
I oiled the thermostat cover bolts and ran them in and out of their holes while it was all apart. Also oiled M6 bolts for that bracket and ran them in and out of their holes. And I also oiled all of the hose clamps I took off, and ran them back and forth quite a ways with 7mm nut driver, so when I put them back they went real easy and I could FEEL when they were about tight.
Fighting old stiff hose clamps makes it almost impossible to know when you have them tight enough and I at least tend to go overboard and verge on cutting the rubber of the hose; if I oil them as above it makes "tight" something your hand can tell.
The oiled threads on the thermostat cover bolts made it lots easier to screw them back, almost to home with my fingers, then down to near tight with a 1/4" ratchet and 12mm socket, then hard-tightened with box end 12mm wrench. Same with M6 bolt on bracket - - I just put in the one I could get at, almost all the way with my fingers, and tightened it home with 1/4" ratchet and socket.
I drained the coolant first (FOUND the drain plug on bottom of radiator, and this car is missing the plastic cover behind bumper skirt, so it was easy). I poured most of it back in - - I had to pause a couple times for car to burp coolant into block. Then ran motor till warm enough to cycle, and topped coolant up to near max.
posted by 72.73.73...
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