Find a STANT 45359. That's a 195 degree thermostat that works on the 5.2 or 5.9 engines. Sounds like your current thermostat is bad out of the box and is not uncommon these days when dealing with budget thermostats.

 

Or the 'safety stats'.... They are notorious for being failure prone.

 

Never heard of them here on the East Coast - do you happen to have a link to an example of one?

 

Something similar to . If it gets too hot, it simply locks open.

 

Oh, I've seen MotoRad stuff in passing and I keep passing it by. Thanks for the info. I'll stick with Stant Superstats - they haven't failed me to-date.

 

oh well the tstat i have is motorad but I don't think it's their failsafe. Also, back to my potential water in oil issue, if my heads were cracked bad enough to mix coolant and water, would it also be bad enough to be sending coolant through the exhaust if the crack is where they typically occur? Or do they crack where the only symptom is oil and water mixing as well?

 

Heads usually crack around the valve seats, and if they are bad enough the coolant is making it into the combustion chambers, you would see other problems as well.

I am a big fan of the stant superstats. They are what I use as well.

 

I've seen where people say the heads can crack and can cause coolant to mix with the oil. How is that? Also i cant smell any antifreeze in my exhaust so i dont think thats an issue. I just am thinking of possible areas where my coolant and oil may be mixing IF they're mixing. Maybe intake? Idk how new head gaskets could have failed already

 

If the block/head mating surface had irregularities, that can cause them to fail. Generally, coolant mixing with oil is headgaskets. Cracked valve seats give performance problems more than anything else. (mystery misfires, low compression, etc.)

 

well my dumb self didn't have the machine shop deck the block at all but I cleaned it pretty damn good. It isnt my first time cleaning a head gasket surface and jve never had one fail. But who knows. I'm just hoping my heads are good and worst case scenario I do the head gaskets, intake gaskets and timing cover. Since those are all the possible spots I can think of that could leak. One possible issue is I reused the intake bolts not knowing you aren't supposed to. They felt a little funny when torturing them down but I just thought it was normal.