It may be a bad idea to push these engines to 5.0, but I don't care. Having the option I would have bought one when I got mine.

 

Sorry for letting this thread hang for so long. After a 5 week cross country trip we settled in Eugene about a month ago, and things are going good. Now onto the Rover!

The Rover has been sitting at my inlaws since we left in July. My father inlaw, and brother inlaw have slowly starting poking around to see what's going on. After talking with them yesterday I think we may have figured out the issue. The Rover ran fine for a bit, and then all of a sudden started getting hot. The temps would slowly creep up, and up, and up with what seemed like no stopping it.

They had it running yesterday, and saw that my UltraGauge was reading 200 degrees, and the thermostat hadn't opened at that point. The upper hose entering the radiator was hot like it should be, and the lower hose leaving the radiator was cold like it shouldn't be. That would lead me to believe that my brand new radiator is clogged, and is causing the heating issues. With no circulation through the radiator the coolant is only going to get hotter, and hotter.

At least that's my thinking.

 

Sounds more like a stuck thermostat to me. You should be able to tell if it's the stat or radiator with a non contact laser thermometer.

 

That would mean that I have had 3 brand new stats bad right out of the box, and all 3 being OEM. Which unfortunately is the luck that we have.

They're going to bypass the stat to see if that keeps the engine cool or not. If it does then we know we have had constant stat issues, or maybe something is keeping it from opening.

 

Ask then to do the online stat mod when bypassing the thermostat. You can run without a stat in the housing. It’s easier to bleed and you’ll know immediately if the problem is addressed.

 

Any updates?

 

Kind of did this.

Yes and no.

They thought it was figured out, but that's not the case. The engine was flushed, and so was the radiator. No blocks were found when doing this. They gutted a bad t-stat, and put everything back together.

After doing this the temps were great, and never get above 196*. Thinking the issue was solved they put the brand new OEM soft spring t-stat I just had shipped to them back in. After the install of the the new t-stat, and running the engine for a bit. They quickly found out the temp issue was not fixed.

We're done with the OEM t-stats since this is 4 in row that have failed. An inline stat will be used going forward, and hopefully this will fix the issue.

 

 

 

Do you still have any of the thermostats? I'm looking to get my hands on a couple "bad" ones.