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Old 12-29-2014, 12:24 PM   #37 (permalink)
Grim
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Atlanta
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Miller88 View Post
My (former) '01 Taurus, father's 01 F350 5.4 and my '11 Focus idle at asinine speeds to light the cat off ASAP. They all will shoot to 2500RPM on cold start. When the exhaust fell off the pickup, that thing would wake the dead when it started and idled at 2500RPM.

The Focus and the F350 are manual transmissions, and they'll go along 30, 35 MPH with your foot off the gas in 5th gear until the cat lights off. The most annoying thing is, they refuse to idle below 2500RPM when moving. Makes shifting on a cold morning nearly impossible.

My Taurus would go about 15MPH or so shifting into 2nd and sometimes 3rd with no throttle applied.

My Jeep doesn't do that ... I could see it destroying the cat idling for a long time




It's an all-in-one. From Rock Auto, looks like I can get either a 180 or 203 thermostat for $89. I just don't know what is ideal operating temp. I don't want to ruin anything by running it at 203 all the time ...
My motorcycle has a "choke" lever. It's not really a choke since its fuel injected just BMW reusing the controls that had been in production for years. It's only function is to prop open the throttle bodies and idle it up to 1800 rpm as currently adjusted. It's like nails on a chalk board to me hearing the cold aluminum engine running those RPM's when it's 35f in the morning all to get that CAT hot.

I read about changing Thermostats a lot here and other boards. Other forums (truck, car) always saying to people who are having overheat issues to put in 180f thermostats in place of the factory thermostats with higher rating not realizing most modern fuel injected cars are designed around a 200-215f operating temp. Sometimes a lower temp thermostat actually will let the coolant move too fast and not shed heat in the radiator making them actually run hotter, common problem when taking the thermostat out completely. I often wonder how many cars are failing to stay in closed loop from this.

My land cruiser that I bought in March has me wondering what the PO has put in it for a thermostat. My SG2 is showing 173f on the HWY this time of the year. I'm getting a code on coolant temp but there is a recall for a ECM fault that trips the same code that I need to investigate. Highest I have ever seen was 195f middle of summer here in Atlanta caught in traffic.
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