Rugratman,
The water exit holes at the front of the heads, where they enter the crossover at the front of the intake, are about 1 3/16" diameter; water from both of those holes have to squeeze thru the combined area of the open t'stat & the hole that runs into the rear of the water pump cavity from the intake [ the bypass]. I have the bypass blocked, because it runs cooler, due to the fact that you are not feeding heated water into the pump inlet & mixing it with cooled water from the radiator. [ Engine, however, does take longer to warm up ]. I cut the top ring off a Robert Shaw high flow stat & made a new ring with a larger opening & I also modified the stat body to match. When the stat is open now, the area for flow is the same or greater than the combined head opening area. In stock condition, the stat open area was about 70% of this area. This took alot of messing around & you may find that just using a high flow stat & blocking off the bypass will make enough difference on your combo. If you block the bypass, make sure you drill 3 holes in the stat as shown on the StewartComponents website, because excess pressure needs to be relieved when blocking the bypass.
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