no thermostat, why was it taken out ?

[wibble]

Yo dudes

Well as some of you may know I was experiencing a cool running engine. Long shot is went to change thermostat and found a chopped up one i.e had been running wiht no themostat.

Questions is what was that done. Know I know if you have an overheating engine this is one way to cure it. But I have read elsewhere that when I fit my new one my engine will :

1) Smoke like mad and spit oil out through piston slap

2) Have a coolant blockage. ( not too sure about this one as my rad & heater got luke warm)

3) Head gasket will disintergrate

4) Someother mechanical woe will befall me immediatlely I fire her up

5) The gates of hell will open spawing a hellmouth temporal breach sending me & pootle to everlasting damnation

or nothing could happen.
So with without prior history as to why this was done whats the worst/ most likely scenario

[ermie571]

Me,
I'm going for option 5, purely on the grounds that my van displays the same temperature fluctuations, so I went and got a new thermostat, but on trying to replace the van said NO in a big way!!! So me thinks that something greater than I is telling me NOT to fiddle!! (and I don't fancy eternal damnation with a VW.... )


Em
x

[Ian Hulley]

Yo dudes

Well as some of you may know I was experiencing a cool running engine. Long shot is went to change thermostat and found a chopped up one i.e had been running wiht no themostat.

Questions is what was that done. Know I know if you have an overheating engine this is one way to cure it. But I have read elsewhere that when I fit my new one my engine will :

1) Smoke like mad and spit oil out through piston slap

2) Have a coolant blockage. ( not too sure about this one as my rad & heater got luke warm)

3) Head gasket will disintergrate

4) Someother mechanical woe will befall me immediatlely I fire her up

5) The gates of hell will open spawing a hellmouth temporal breach sending me & pootle to everlasting damnation

or nothing could happen.
So with without prior history as to why this was done whats the worst/ most likely scenario

You need to stop reading things 'elsewhere'

The main reason tends to be that the van was overheating, so removing the stat disguises this by not holding coolant back in the engine and allowing it straight to the rad to be cooled. If you've got overheating issues it's not going to go away and will (sooner or later) result in tears before bedtime unless it's cured properly.

Probably though the tightwad couldn't be ar$ed to replace a duff stat.

Good luck, Ian.

[Mr Bean]

Yo dudes

Well as some of you may know I was experiencing a cool running engine. Long shot is went to change thermostat and found a chopped up one i.e had been running wiht no themostat.

Questions is what was that done. Know I know if you have an overheating engine this is one way to cure it. But I have read elsewhere that when I fit my new one my engine will :

1) Smoke like mad and spit oil out through piston slap

2) Have a coolant blockage. ( not too sure about this one as my rad & heater got luke warm)

3) Head gasket will disintergrate

4) Someother mechanical woe will befall me immediatlely I fire her up

5) The gates of hell will open spawing a hellmouth temporal breach sending me & pootle to everlasting damnation

or nothing could happen.
So with without prior history as to why this was done whats the worst/ most likely scenario

The reason for having thermostat is to allow your cyclinder block to achieve but not exceed the temperature at which your engine is designed to run most efficiently in mainly terms of:
1. fuel economy
2. lubication efficiency
3. and incidentally, heater performance.
Numbers 1 & 2 are very relevent as fuel is so expensive and inefficient lubrication will shorten the life of your engine. It is true that there may be some risk in fitting a stat but you should bite the bullet and correctly diagnose and fix any fault which shows up as a result. Ignor the designers intent at your risk. For instance my brother has a thing about oil pressure so many moons ago he upped the pressure release valve considerably. result - sheared oil pump drive. In another post I talked about my Mondeo not having a stat and when I fitted one it smoked like the clappers. The stat never buggered the engine it just revealed the faulty rings. Go on feel that lead between your teeth!
Cheers
Ken
(Maybe the last owner glued the housing on and was afraid to unglue it)