Trans Am Thermostats
Ahhhh...now that makes some sense to my feeble brain...
A system that is thermostat-free LOSES the benefit of the restrictive flow that it brings along to the party, thus not allowing the rad to fully "...do its thing" in the cooling department! Simple.
Yes, I really should investigate the merits of a lower-temperature thermostat, than the one that's in the car presently (190F, if memory serves me well).
My '78 may well have originally had just a two core radiator...it has no A/C, & the transmission is a stock T-10. The rad in it presently is a three core brass & copper unit, which was installed in the summer of '04 (I wish I had the spare cash for an all-aluminum four core model!).
I think my mistake here re. the car running hotter than I'd prefer is two-fold, i.e.:
(1) I SHOULD have replaced the coolant, and flushed the system, in '06 (a two year interval just like the owner's manual said to do), and,
(2) When I finally DID just that last summer, I used the newest generation of Prestone anti-freeze that has all of the "latest & greatest" additives to make it compatible with aluminum, instead of the old-fashioned straight ethyl-glycol blend. Indeed, whenever I tap off some of the coolant from the bottom of the rad, I can see a sort of a white, milky "residue" that (I believe) is designed to bond with aluminum, extending the life of that metal.
I recall that when I drove the car after getting the new rad & the old-fashioned "new" anti-freeze in '04, it didn't matter a whit if the outside temperature was 98F --- the engine temperature guage would barely register above idling temperature, even when I pushed the accelerator hard on the highway.
Sometime this summer it's my intention to flush-out the entire system, dump the anti-freeze that's in there now, and replace it all with the old-fashioned blend (I see it at the local auto parts place --- it sells for about $3.00 more per jug than the newer-styled stuff)...all this, and maybe put in a lower temperature thermostat, too.
Thanks for the info...
Eddy
Ontario, CANADA
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