I just installed my thermostat over the weekend along with my spoon rad cap. After driving my car around for the past couple of days I've noticed that my temp guage stays at 2 bars for long periods of time. It'll hit 3 bars only after I've been driving for a WHILE (about 20+ miles) but then a few mins later it'd drop back to 2 bars again. Should i be concern about this or is this a good thing?

I did a search on it and it looks like that it's not too good of an idea for your car to be too cool.

BTW, I live in the Bay Area where the coldest it's been recently is around 40 degrees F. any input is great thanks.

 

hmm im guessing that if your temp gauge is only registering 2 bars, then vtec will *not* engage. do you have this problem? let me read my helms manual and see what it says.

this is only an educated guess. for example, when i installed my h22a-s motor in my accord, it came with a faulty thermostat and was sticking open(im glad honda uses fail-safe thermostats that stick open instead of closing up, then that would suck). since the car would never reach operating temps due to the open thermostat, vtec would never engage. after i changed it out, everything was fine.

 

This engine (as well as all internal combustion engines) has an optimal range of operating temps. I do not believe 2 bars is it. Running this cool, your engine will not be at its most efficient. I have never understood why people who do not live in extremely hot climates or who do not regularly track the car, would put on such mods. It's not how cold it gets around where you live (as in the 40*F you stated) but how consistently HOT it gets.

 

I think the Spoon Thermostat is what's causing this problem. I'm not sure if this is correct, but this is exactly what happened in my days of messing around with the B-series motors. When I installed a Spoon thermostat, the engine temp was REALLY cool all the time (also do in part by the aluminum radiator I had). In order to get around this, for a short time I ran an ECU that allowed me to VTEC regardless of temp. However, this isn't exactly the best choice. I changed out the thermostat to an OEM one in the end and decided that an aftermarket thermoswitch is what i really wanted.

RazorV3 is likely correct though. Your thermostat may have just been a defective one or it wasn't properly installed. I'd suggest checking that first before doing anything else (yeah, I know it's not what you want to have to do). Let us know what happens. Also you want to make sure your thermostat is facing the right direction.

 

They are probably working correctly. It is designed to get the cooling system to work sooner to keep the car cool if you drive agressively in high RPM or when you tracka the car where you are spending a lot of time in high rpm keeping your engine hotter than "normal" operating temp.

If you are having trouble keeping the temp in the 3 bar, the engine is not hot enough, so the cooling mods is working too, but not ideal for your current application.

When we race production cars, one of the first cooling things we do is to make the thermostat stuck on open all of the time to maximize the cooling system. The Spoon and Mugen cooling mods only starts working earlier than stock for people who needs it.

Terry

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by blureds2k
I just installed my thermostat over the weekend along with my spoon rad cap. After driving my car around for the past couple of days I've noticed that my temp guage stays at 2 bars for long periods of time. It'll hit 3 bars only after I've been driving for a WHILE (about 20+ miles) but then a few mins later it'd drop back to 2 bars again. Should i be concern about this or is this a good thing?

I did a search on it and it looks like that it's not too good of an idea for your car to be too cool.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RazorV3
hmm im guessing that if your temp gauge is only registering 2 bars, then vtec will *not* engage.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by xviper
This engine (as well as all internal combustion engines) has an optimal range of operating temps.

 

This is true based on what older threads have said about the thermo. Also according to those threads, these mods are not made for daily drivers because it does take so long to warm up. The thermo/fswitch combo causes the fan to go on sooner and keeps the car running cooler. I would try to go back and search for some older threads about the thermostat.

 

Charles, you need the Spoon thermoswitch too. These parts work in conjuction and should be used together.