[Healeys] Thermostats

[Alan Seigrist]

Hi Fred -

I have always found that regardless of the thermostat you use, using a
lower temp thermostat seems to have the car run a bit better.  I use 160 in
hot weather and 180 in cooler weather.  Keeping the head a bit cooler helps
to keep the carbs from getting overly hot... which causes air gaps to form
between the throttle shafts and the carb bodies, causing rough running.  If
you have this problem, you need to replace the teflon bushes on your HD8s.

Sleeved thermostats seem to make some difference in hot weather, otherwise
ultimately I don't think there's much difference, it just makes the car
warm up a bit faster, or so people claim.  Old style bellows thermostats
fail in the closed position, so that's not really ideal.

Some old timers argue that the hotter a car runs, the less wear you have on
the rings in the motor - my experience with a 180 deg thermostat on my BJ8
says otherwise - 80K miles after rebuild with stock 5 ring pistons -
there's still not one bit of oil burned in that engine.

Best,

Alan



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