Our 2006 Grand Caravan SXT (46K Miles) just kicked a P0128 code a couple of days ago. This says that the coolant temp is lower than the thermostat temp.

I am at work, and don't have the "proper clothing" to check much right now, but over my lunch break I am going to check the coolant level, and try to locate the thermostat.

I know that when swapping a thermostat, you will loose coolant as it drains out, but outside of the physical removal of the thermostat and gasket, and then the replacement with a new gasket and new thermostat, is there anything I need to be aware of besides replacing the lost coolant?

It seems fairly straightforward, and yet my searching here has yielded that a dealership would charge quite a bit to basically replace $18 in a gasket and thermostat, and then the lost coolant (understanding that the labor they charge is more than the parts)... Why so much labor? Again, maybe it is just standard operation procedure at the dealership, but I thought that I would ask here before getting started on this.

Thanks!

 

You will need to drain some coolant out. The t-sat is in the upper hose on the engine block. Be sure the clean off all the old gasket or you can have a coolant leak. You also need to bleed the air out of the system too.

 

So what is the best/easiest way to bleed the air out?

 

Never mind. I just put the vehicle on some ramps, took off the radiator cap, ran the engine and kept topping it off as the bubbles came up.

The thermostat was definitely bad... It was broken into 4 pieces!!!! I am just glad that none of it got into the engine! The job was actually pretty easy. The hardest part was just the waiting of the coolant to cool down. I hate that feeling knowing that the longer I wait, the cooler it will get, but the later it gets in the day in case I need to make an "emergency run" to the auto parts store...

Thermostat replaced and everything put back together, plus bleeding the air out took maybe 45 minutes, and that was me going at a fairly slow pace.

Of course, I learned a lot just doing this simple job... Like that I can turn the key to ON-OFF-ON-OFF-ON (without actually starting it) and it will display the codes on the dash! Cool. Same code as the reader gave me that I had to drive 15 minutes each way to get to. I wish I knew that last night. :-)

Of course, the CEL is still on, but I am thinking that is normal until the vehicle makes a couple of "good" trips....

 

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