[arpad_m]

Originally Posted by bishopts

The thermostat isnt really "bad". Its passing coolant sooner than it's designed to so it ends up taking a little longer than normal to go from stone cold to operating temperature. They have been doing it for years its just GM has tighter standards on the timeframe.
For me i just took the code out because it's more for an emissions check than it is for a engine durability standard. Its along the same as GM runs their standard operating temps much higher than other makers. So yes you can get better control of emissions but it ends up sacrificing cooling system reliability because the plastics are stressed much more.
Which is why on my GM vehicles i lowered the operating temperature to 200ish. And i don't have cooling system problems.

Thanks for the insight, as always.

I will say that Ted's tune did something similar on my car, I think the temp threshold is set to 195 or 190 on mine, and the fan comes on earlier with a more aggressive overall duty cycle, too. So maybe there's hope for my 8-year old stat after all My mileage is low, too, so we'll see.