Are these thermostats from Rusty? The good "made in France" ones? There Chinese ones are crap, absolute waste of time.
See my other post but I think the big reason for not blocking the radiator is that something is wrong with the cooling system. Your symptoms don't make any sense to me. Run petro diesel for a week while its cold out to verify that the car absolutely doesn't behave like you say... On my morning commute today I had full temp in 3 miles. Ambient temp was 16F. Return trip I have to get on the highway within a mile of startup, I had full temp in 2.5 miles, ambient temp 24F. Based on that I'm sticking to there being something wrong with your car. The bioD argument just doesn't make sense to me. Granted there are loads of things that don't make sense to me but still. I kind of wish there was a bio pump somewhere handy, I'd spend the extra cash to see if my car did the same thing. -Curt Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:44:56 -0800 From: ernest breakfield <erne...@backyardengineering.org> To: Mercedes Discussion List <mercedes@okiebenz.com> Subject: Re: [MBZ] running temps in the cold? (was: Re: glowing in the cold) Message-ID: <4b43b2d8.1090...@backyardengineering.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed hi Curt! yep; gauge seems to work fine, and no disparities when checked with a laser thermometer. operating temps with #2 fuel in more temperate weather are pretty much what we'd expect. like i said; once it's on the highway for a while, it reads like you say yours does; just over the 80C mark... just takes a good long while to get all the way up there when running BioD. cabin heat seems pretty adequate (Climate Control does a pretty good job of taking care of that). doesn't start making any heat until the engines got some, but that seems consistent with what it was designed to do. concerns with running it below target temp are related to poorer combustion/power/shifting/fuel economy, and the fact that if it doesn't get up to temp it never evaporates the water that condenses into the oil, resulting in the formation of acids and higher contaminants. (i change the oil every 3K anyway because of what the BioD does to it, but i'd prefer to try to keep the odds stacked more in my favor.) i guess what i'm looking for is to see if there's any good reason *not* to block off some of the airflow,...? cheers! e _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com