The coolant can circulate without the stat open. Truck starts the water pump spins. Coolant is moving, but it doesnt have to be flowing around through the radiator...the stat is closed. Theres a short period of time until the hose and the coolant inside it warms up enough to open the stat. The engine temp doesnt always mean it's the stat or radiator temp.

 

Not always. The hoses that opens the stat may not warm up as fast as the coolant inside at the temp sensor. This design isnt exactly like a typical Chevy, ford setup.

 

I've only owned mine for a few months now. Once I brought it home, I got the faint smell of coolant coming from the front, with no visible signs of leaks. I did exactly what CollieRover suggested with no pressure drops or missing coolant. The final culprit was a bad water pump. It's just starting to leak at the bearing only when at operating temp, but with no play. I had to use my bore scope to verify the leak.

I would say just take your time, test and validate, before chucking money at it. Plus, it took me several bleeding sessions to all the air out after a recent head replacement, let alone how much that failing water pump bearing may have re-introduced.

 

it seems the right time for me to contact one of Chinese contacts to quote me pricing for Discovery thermostats, their failure rate at the end of production line is less than 7 in 1000
what I read on this site are truly atrociously high failure numbers and these products mostly come from Israel...... ???

 

Possibly, but with the recent wave of tariffs against Chinese products you may not be able to import it at a price that will sell.

That being said, I am continuously surprised at how few Chinese- and/or Eastern European-made "knockoff" parts are available for my Disco2. For my other cars (mostly from the VW family), I have too many choices, but virtually none at all for the Disco. mike

 

I assume that is because of the LandWind X7 - they copied a whole car LOL , the thing actually drives really good and has a perfect finish inside.... only thing I found out .. it has no rust production, zero..... and you can tell that they love Android omg

jokes aside, they offered me the snorkel kit, see on of my previous posts and they do make seats for them, with cool integrated controls, its remove and replace mode - it gets complicated though when you state imports - they are taking responsibility on them to not hurt other Asian countries so they let Malaysia be the producer of LandRover stuff. Quite remarkable that they try to maintain this sort of code of conduct when it comes to easily produced items

 

I have yet to experience a single INOP 180F Thermostat be it a Britpart or OEM LR unit. Only unit’s I’ve seen fail are nearly 20 year old OEM 195’s that have lived well past their expected life.

I’ll take anyone’s INOP 180F & toss it into a D2.

 

Yep. I agree. And then you can send me it and I'll do the same just for shìts and giggles.

Why dont other motorads or thermostat manufacturers have the same problem with the other stats they sell?

I'll say it...because there is no problem. It's the customer and his lack of cycling properly.

Many of these stats we buy are made on the same damn assembly line and they are just re-labeled. There isnt 100,000 different thermostat manufacturers...there just a couple...they just re-box. So when you say one brand is faulty...you may be putting in the same one that is just labeled as someone elses.

 

I had a bad Britpart 180 stat, was getting circulation but I assume the thing wasn't opening all the way. Tossed in old Motorad stat, didn't overheat, put back Britpart, overheated. Exchanged for new one and no issues after that.

 

I watched a 1hr video on how thermostats were made & yep I totally agree there are probably just a handful of places that actually make the thermostat part itself. Then they get shipped off to say Gates, Dayco, Murray, Motorad, Britpart, and all the OEM manufactures.

D2’s aren’t the only vehicle that can sometimes be hard to get the air out of. Jeep WJ 4.7L V8 is picky, and so are most small Honda/VW’s that have crazy routed coolant hoses.

It could take 3 good attempts to get the air out if there was a big enough air pocket in the system be it in the heater core, intake manifold, or in the radiator.

I do so many 180F thermostat installs in TX that it isn’t even funny. Not one single bad thermostat! A brand new thermostat is either going to open or stay closed. It’s not going to just partially open or close. That could happen with crap in the cooling system or an old original 20 year old thermostat, but if a brand new thermostat doesn’t open it’s because the thermostat is surrounded by air vs coolant.

I highly suggest removing the upper radiator hose off the T, then filling it until the lower hose has coolant flowing out, then install the thermostat. That usually will get rid of a large air pocket in the radiator. Which will make the thermostat to open. Then you can bleed the air out with several cool down/top off cycles.

I just did my friends new to him 04 that he drove to me. He had temps of 220F at idle... I let it cool down enough that I could depressurize the system, flush it, and install the 180F (gotta love a hot engine bay lol), I slapped in coolant, burped it, let it cool for 30min, and then drove that sucker! Temps were 188-193F and idle was 200F. That’s 20F cooler & I honestly rushed it, but the key is to burp it, and fill the radiator until coolant flows out then install the thermostat.