sounds like an inline mod. Lots of aluminum housings on the market. I run a 195 in cold and a 180 in hot weather. Just regular ol Stant stats.

 

Wife and I have a hit list of LR3 and D2 products, t stat housing is next. Drawings are done for plastic and Aluminum. Now the research begins, waiting for quotes.

 

I’ve seen one custom thermostat housing that went into the OEM position & you could replace the thermostat, but it was like 250.00.

There is nothing wrong with an OEM style 180F thermostat in a well maintained cooling system with green coolant. I’ve never had one seize up since switching to 180F units and green coolant. Old days with 195F & dex yep I see plenty!

 

We have had vehicles that even after a complete cooling system overhaul and the 180 stat, still run at 195-200. We think it would be ideal to tailor the t stat to your specific region and engine temps. With that said, it would be a less than $250. More like $239.99... jk

 

 

Yeah I agree, but I’ve owned a lot of different makes of 4x4’s and even with a 180F in them the overall temp wil only change a few degree’s. It will open faster yes, but if you reach the point where the air going thru the radiator can’t keep up with heat being generated even a 180F can’t fix that. You’d need a larger surface area of air passing thru the radiator, a faster fan like an E-Fan, or a larger radiator.

The H3 Alpha I owned with a 5.3L had similar cooling issues as a D2. It had a small radiator, small radiator opening, and it only had a clutch operated fan from the factory without even a small efan for the HVAC... I tried a 180F thermostat and it helped at slow speeds, 70-75MPH it was only 3-5F cooler if that. I helped it with the addition of an e-fan that I could program into the PCM to control it like a LR D2. I also changed the fan blade to a blade with a different blade config/count and a severe duty clutch. I was going to grab the larger aluminum radiator with more cores, but I sold it for my LR3 before I did it.

The other issue with running cooler is emissions/MPG. The ECU is setup for a certain temp range. If the engine runs cooler it will think it’s cold weather and run rich. MPG will drop & our LR’s already run rich as it is.

I have an 04 with SAI and trust me running cool does nothing but trigger a P0126 fault. The ECU is detecting the engine is taking to long to warm up. During that time until I hit a freeway and hit 70-75MPH it’s running rich to compensate.

To truly cool our D2’s we need to create larger grill openings, a larger core radiator, and I’d even go as far in TX as recommending hood louvers to help the heat flow out of the engine bay.

I took an 04 grill and drilled a million little holes in it, and saw a few degree’s cooler. I then removed it totally and saw 5F cooler at speed. So that tells me the issue isn’t with the thermostat, but the airflow/radiator size. The Saudi Grill for example on my Kalahari allowed it to run 5F cooler down the road easy, but with the TF front bumper I swapped it for an 03-04 grill (couldn’t bring myself to chop up the Saudi Grill for a bumper install!).

Speeds of 55-65MPH with a 180F thermostat, HVAC on full blast, ARB, winch gets me 193F. Speed up to 75-80MPH and temps will go up to 206F then with the 180F you’ll see a pretty large temp float range as I call it. It’ll get up to 206F for a few minutes, then creep down to 188F, and repeat itself over the entire road trip. You do not see this large of a temp float range with a 195F thermostat. It’ll do the 206F to maybe back down to 196F, but does the same thing. It’s just the engine getting warm, cooling itself, then repeating. If the airflow was increased or more cores in the radiator I truly think we’d have much better luck.

 

Yeah, but you can stick to stock Hoses, and just swap the thermostat.

 

Production arrives next week. We went black.

 

 

I want the grey one still