Your car’s thermostat is considered old after about 100,000 miles or 10 years. This being said, you may get more life out of the thermostat. Once you start to have problems with it, stop by our auto repair shop so we can remove the old thermostat and replace it with a new one. The new one will be designed to give you the same amount of mileage so you won’t need to worry about this auto repair again for another 100,000 miles or 10 years. Here are signs your car’s thermostat is going bad.
Rusted Thermostat
The thermostat unit itself is protected by a metal housing. Unfortunately, old thermostats tend to leak coolant out of the coolant release valve. As the coolant seeps out of the thermostat, it will puddle against the metal housing. As you know, liquid corrodes metal. Consequently, you will end up with a rusted thermostat housing and rusted thermostat. Unfortunately, this corrosion can eat through the metal of the housing and the thermostat and cause…
Leaking Coolant
Once the thermostat develops a more severe leak, you will see coolant on the garage floor. Consequently, we need to replace the thermostat in order to restore a normal level of coolant in the engine. If you do not have enough coolant circulating through the engine, the engine will overheat. A leaking thermostat can reduce the level of coolant in the engine significantly if the leak is bad enough.
Erratic Temperatures
Another thing to look for is the temperature of your engine. If it is going up and down constantly according to the temperature gauge needle on the dashboard, the thermostat may be malfunctioning. When this happens, the thermostat does not release the coolant at the right time. Consequently, your engine may start to overheat. Then, suddenly, the thermostat will release too much coolant and the engine temperature will get too cold. This will happen if the thermostat is faulty.
Overheating Constantly
Finally, your vehicle could overheat all the time if the thermostat does not release the coolant. This can happen if the thermostat dies completely. Unfortunately, there is no way to repair the thermostat. Rather, we will need to replace this cooling system part with a new one to restore the even monitoring of the engine’s temperature and coolant release.
Call us today if you are having the problems discussed in this blog. It’s probable that your automobile needs a new thermostat, and we can install one.