Thermostat And Thermostat housing replacement

Not sure for every application but if the temp sensor needed to be disturbed or moved from the housing (some are in the housing) then wiring and the sensor could have been damaged in the swap. I'm relying on your observation that the engine was NOT hot when it indicated it was and should have been boiling over at that extreme.

Likely that this is bad luck and could be sloppy work and now hard to say. Why did this cost so damn much $$?? Most housings fail from being over tightened which must have happened before this work so when did that happen?

T

I simply don't know that engine but alone that doesn't matter. You could see this leaking which suggests it didn't require going thru your oil pan to get at and there are some simple things that are nasty hard but a thermostat is not usually one of them.

I'll accept the parts costs. Even I was shocked (retired now) that just an original Ford thermostat and simple gasket I wanted for a restoration project - old but not that old - 89 common V8 - came to about $20 and ya could have had that for $16 with a biz discount still listed but not active so didn't chase that or just gone to a chain place and it would have been $5 bucks but I wanted original so I should shut up - right? I used my own anti-freeze etc which isn't all that expensive and shops would double thier actual costs for these things.

For yours I don't understand why the housing was broken to begin with?? If a senser needed to be removed from it it could have been sticky but if the housing was broken already you wouldn't need extra care not to break it in the swap - right? the $210 still suggests about 3 chargable labor hours! There is a labor guide that they should not exceed without a good reason and there may have been one - you'd have to ask. I does take some time to fill a system and make sure all air is out which is a bit of waiting for letting it get up to operating temp and checking - whatever.

The questions now come: Why didn't they notice the temp reading? You don't just fill up a cooling system without running the engine and know it's full.

It may only have a bubble of air in it now and need more coolant but that is their fault if that happened. It the temp senser failed when disturbed if it really needed to be that is possible bad luck but they should have noticed it!!

I still wonder why it needed this job to begin with. Thermostat job - perhaps. The housing at this age had to have been broken by misinstallation at some point or did it really corrode or something like that? Was it damaged with some other work or a collision in this car??

I worth bringing up as that's a lot of money for that job and worse it left you with another!!!!

T

Ok: There's a clear problem right away. The min level in the recovery tank is fine for when the car is stone cold and marked that way. Coolant expands and it should have another line indicating "full hot" and that's ok when fully warmed up. Being empty means it absolutely wasn't full and air was highly likely to still be in a closed cooling system which is improper - case closed on that part as the recovery bottle is only an indicator when the rad is known full.

Corroded housing to the point of leaking is really not their fault by itself. Thier job was to correct that and a new housing would be called for. It then is thier responsibility to check that the cooling system is properly filled and would be for any reason coolant needed to be lowered or emptied for some service. You said it read hot in just two miles and you may not know how long it had been since the engine had been run if just to park it out of the shop. We may not know that but if you picked it up the day they finished it was run that day. Any job that involves a gasket or seal gets checked before the car is released to the customer. Read any silly screw on oil filter for example and it will say start the car and check for leaks. I think your problem is the coolant is just too low and just filling the recovery tank takes many cycles to purge air out. This is not rocket science and a tech should know this. You as a customer aren't expected to finish the job - you paid them for that!

It's just expected (by me) that if in the course of doing a job you notice that there was more unseen problems you should be called to give a go ahead for more work than was expected. When t-stat was out did they comment on what the cooling system unseen with it in place didn't look so good or that this should be serviced further?

This work at your observation is already sloppy. Whether the sender is in fact not working now because of the work is a gray area. It could have been so close to failing for some reason that just touching it would finish it off. Perhaps and I'm still guessing that the senser even needed to be touched, they dropped it on the floor or something and you just have to trust the integrity of the shop and tech to admit that.

Still, the car was obviously not checked out before you got it back and that's an issue,

T