I know some of you guys love these, but this is the first and last one I will buy. 6 months old and mine is shot. After trying to figure out why my temp gauge wasn't rising, I pulled it apart and found it stuck open. Obviously that is the design. Kind of silly design that it locks open since it is a thermostat after all and if it is hot it will open and stay open until it cools. I really don't see why you would want it forced open after it overheats. In any case, I put it in a pan and found that it was locking at about 160 degrees. Well short of the 192 that it should have. I put in a new stant and expect to have no more issues.

I guess I would like the fail safe a little better if the thermostat was a little easier to get to, but I still think it is a wasted design.

 

Well, that's the point of a fail safe, man. If you are in bumper to bumper traffic on a 100* day, you really don't that stat to pop and slam shut.

 

I had one do the same in just a few months.
But it did fail safe (open).

 

But the point is if it fails, it will stay open. If something happens that it fails when it is shut, it will stay shut. Either way you don't need the clip to hold it open after it opens to a certain point. If it opens to that point because of heat it stays open as long as the coolant is hot. It closes when the coolant temp drops. It can't slam shut just because it gets hot.

In my situation it was opening more than it should. It failed, but had the temps been higher it wouldn't have made any difference since it was opening prematurely.

It is kind of like locking the doors open after the cows have already left the barn.