The 292 in my 64 C10 seems to be REAL cold-blooded. Even in the summertime it hardly gets above the cold mark on the temp gauge. In the winter, the defroster won't put out enough heat to melt ice off the inside of the windshield.
So yesterday I replaced the heater blower motor (the old one was pretty weak) and decided to change the thermostat. I'd never seen a 292 thermostat before and I was surprised to see something that looked like a sink strainer. It had a brass bowl with holes all around it and it was marked 180. I figgered 180 otta be good enough to get some sort of heat in the winter...but who knows?
So I went to the FLAPS (called them first to make sure they had one) and when I got there the one they pulled was the same as a smallblock V8. With a little help from the parts guys (my compliments to AutoZone...they were really helpful...of course I've spent enough money there that they otta be) we came up with a thermostat for a Mopar 440 motor that was the same diameter as the bowl-type unit I'd pulled out, but didn't have what I figured were bypass holes. I put it in and it fit just fine. But I got the same results. The temp gauge needle hardly moved and although I could feel warmth on the radiator hoses, they sure weren't hot. I drove it to a
car show today and the temp stayed on the way cool side, although the ambient temperature was in the upper 80s. Btw, there's a very kool 47 Chevy AD pickup on that web site, with a TPI smallblock.
Meanwhile, back at the thermostat, I'm wondering if that "extra hose" on the 292 is a thermostat bypass and that it doesn't really matter too much what the thermostat does. I was thinkin of putting a 195 stat in for the winter, but if it gets bypassed, it doesn't seem like there's much of a reason to do that.
Most of the cooling system problems I've had have been with tryin to keep things from overheating. This is just backwards. Oh...I also have a thermal clutch fan on there in place of the stock fixed fan...and it's working fine. When it gets warm under the hood, the fan stops freewheeling and does its job...but it does turn freely when it's cool.
I'm about to lose my cool over the whole deal...I don't wanna go thru another winter like last year where I had to scrape the inside of the windshield whenever the temps get down below 20 or so.
Any ideas?
