Explorer Exploded - Thermostat Help?

[FordLover]

I have no idea what FORD could be thinking when they "engineer" the position of certain parts on the engine. on my 99 ex, the thermostat is located under the intake black plastic thing..so you need a good socket set with a universal....why does FORD intentinally locate normal maintenance items under and behind stuff????

Uh, they were probably thinking, how often does a thermostat have to be replaced? About once every 5-6 years, maybe?

Gee, just be glad they don't put the fuel filler behind the idler. Things that are accessed once every few months, need to be easy to get to, but items like a fuel filter or thermostat housing don't need to be a 2 minute job.

Even the Heater core in the explorer is a 15 minute job if your taking your time, I wish I could say that about my Taurus.

 

[Bronco638]

Gina,

Like Jason & Glacier mentioned, the cooling system may not be full. Usually what happens is a pocket of trapped air finds it's way into the intake manifold where the temperature sensor is. The air becomes super-heated and your gauge pegs at "H" or the gauge moves between "C" & "H" as air and water come in contact with the sensor. At this point, changing the t-stat is a good idea (like EVERYONE suggested). When I do this, I try to park my truck with the front wheels on a curb to get the nose of the truck higher than the tail. This will help the air find it's way out of the system. Also, be sure the over-flow tank has coolant in it. If there's more air, the system will pull fluid from the tank went it cools down.

Dave.

 

[MadMike6786]

its a pain replacing a thermo... but i agree with goatman dont sell it

 

[2talll]

Just be thankful that by exploding you didn't literally mean exploding. The engine in my 94 explorer was 2-3 miles away from actually exploding. It was a two summers ago when the temperature gauge started getting alot higher than normal all the time. So I take it in to have it checked and I was told that it was fine and that the temperature it was reading was normal because it was an older vehicle and it was really hot. A week later I'm driving home from my parents and it gets all the way to H. I stop and let it cool off and then 10 minutes after starting again it was all the way at H again. So I finally get home and call the garage the next morning and they tell me to refill it with coolant and take it for a drive to see if that fixed it. Well as I'm taking for a drive I here a bang and see steam. It got so hot that the radiator cap went flying off and dented my hood! Even sitting in the shade for an hour and half and refilling it with coolant didn't get the temp back down so I had to get it towed to the garage. They tried replacing sparkplugs to see what that would do and they instantly blew. They started digging a little deeper and said I would have needed a new engine because that one was in really bad shape- bad enough that if I kept driving for a few more miles it would have exploded and I would have been sitting on the side of the road watching my car burn.

That's how I ended up with my current 99.