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Thermostat Repair Procedure


lowrider
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- Relax. Center your chi...prepare to be upset you bought that truck in the first place. Send your wife, girlfriend or main squeeze away, tell her to take the kids and come back in a few hours.

 

- Open hood, open beer, light cigarette while you wait for the motor to cool.

 

- Remove skidplate. Open rad at top, be careful not to hit yourself in the eye with hot coolant, it hurts.

 

- Open petcock at bottom of rad and drain rad. into a drainpan. see above for safety advice.

 

- Remove upper radiator hose. Remove lower radiator hose

 

- Remove fan...4 10mm nuts hold it on

 

- Remove fan shroud 4 10mm bolts 2 on the left, 2 on the right

 

- Take a break, open new beer, light new smoke, recenter chi

 

- Remove radiator, 4 10 mm bolts on top, lift out

 

- If you truck is equipped with a/c, remove the idler pully assembly from the top of the motor, 12 mm bolt with loosen tension, 3 more hold it to the block.

 

- The thermostat is located inside it's housing on the left side of the motor, follow the hardpipe from the lower rad hose and thats the housing.

 

- Prior to removing thermostat, position your drainpan under the housing, it's gonna piss fluid

 

- 3 12mm bolts hold the thermostat housing together. Remove them.

 

- By now the thermostat has probably fallen out, some genius at nissan figured it was a good idea to not only stuff it way into the motor, but also mount it upside down, curse said engineer and use graphic words that start with F, C, B, and Monkey S.

 

- You'll notice there's no gasket, use red gasket maker and seal it up, be VERY sparing with it, if you put a TINY BIT on the new thermostat on the engine side, it will stick in place while you tighten the housing back together; you don't want this thing to leak once you put it all back together, that would really suck, wouldn't it? And having it stuck shut again cuz you slathered too much on would be worse, right?

 

- Hose your rad out while its out of the truck and flush it.

 

- Put your truck back together

 

- Add new coolant, check for leaks, you tightened that petcock at the bottom, right?

 

 

Don't do it the way i tried to fix my cooling issue, which consisted of:

 

- Take the lazy route and try to fix cooling problem by swapping coolant. Burn eye by not wearing safety glasses as hot coolant sprays out of petcock. Let a blue streak of profanity out at full volume not realizing two little kids and parents are walking by.

 

- Take truck for ride, cools worse than before.

 

- Ignore your buddys advice and attempt to skip steps like removing rad, fan and shroud.

 

- Cut the living crap out of hands while removing housing, becuase you took off mechanix gloves when they got wet from coolant

 

- Realize you drank all beer at the nissan jamboree

 

- Realize you are short a tool, get roomate to give ride to can tire

 

- Come home and smoke cig in almost one draw, roomate sees frustration and jumps in to help

 

- Watch and feel useless as roommate executes proper repair procedure after 2 failed attempts of reinstallation and removes rad and associated parts

 

- Take truck for a ride, problem solved, buy new pack of smokes, drink a rum and go to bed.

 

 

Oh well, i can't be good at everything..... -thnkboutit-

Edited by lowrider
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  • 2 weeks later...

Oh, that was supposed to be humor? Are you saying my life is a joke?

I mean, that was like a near blow by blow description of my first experience...

:D

 

Except it sounds like you didn't have the Clymer manual on hand to "help". That piece of worse than useless tripe claims the thermostat is located in a different location than where it really is! That lead to another outburst of selective mechanic jargon...

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Oops, i just realized i posted this in the wrong forum. My truck is a 1990+ WD21 pathy. Can a mod move this? Or given the fact that it's a general procedure for the VG30I, should it be in 'the garage'?

 

BTW --- thanks for the accolades, gentlemen, look for my upcoming features 'fun with starters' and '101 wrong ways to replace manifold studs'

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