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The compartment airflow is now such that the aftermarket 185F thermostat is a little too cool for best FE where before the hot climate this XJ lives in still found near 210-220F temps regularly.
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Well I definately hear you on that note, I went for a long early morning drive at an ambient temp of 75 degrees F or so, only to find that on the freeway, I couldn't get my temp gauge to get to anything above 181 degrees which is still in "engine warm up" (burning rich) range and it was eating my FE. I got out and checked everything and it seems that my upgraded radiator is overcooling my system at this tempreture. Although this bodes very well for future modding and grillblocking, it's an imediate pain in the arse as I have need to travel the freeway and prefer to get higher than 18-19 MPG for my money spent at the pump.
So I dug this leftover piece of coroplast out of my hatch and hacked away at it with my pocket knife until I had the attrocity that is shown below (at least it didn't appear to hurt my FE).
I attached it with some short pieces of 16ga wire I had lying in my toolbox (have to buy more zipties). Sure enough, after about a mile or so, my temp crept up to the 196, just enough to open my thermostat, eventually making it to 202, where it sat for most of the rest of the morning. It should be noted that once the big heat of the day came along (90 degrees f +), the a/c forced the temps to climb up to the 220 mark where the busted fan has to kick on to lower everything back down.... counterproductive. So off came the block, and I was back to the 202-208 temp range. I did get a good look of where the vehicle design flaws weren't able to fully take advantage of a partial grill block (just look to the left and rightmost grill vent, how they are allowing air past the radiator without assisting in cooling measures. I'll have a bit of fun with that part tomorrow, more pictures to follow.