Running cold

Afternoon all.

So I drove to Kent last week and noticed that the temp gauge on the dash was reading 80 most of the way (car is a 2005 3.2 by the way!) with slight fluctuations. I'm guessing that my thermostat has stuck open (assuming that the engine should operate at 90-95 degrees, with a stat set at about 88), so the car will be running cold permenantly, which explains why consumption wasn't quite right too.

Questions are as follows

1. How hard are they to replace. I've had a quick buthers and they seem to live at the top of the engine, which means in theory I shouldn't dump that much coolant! Is it just as easy as removing the silencers, the inlet manifold and robert is your fathers brother?

2. Is there a guide to bleeding them anywhere? My previous BMW was a pain to bleed if you didn't know wjhat you were doing.

3. Is there any other preventative maintenance worth doing whilst the inlet manifold is off?

Cheers guys!

Rob

Hi Rob,

Stat is on top as you said.

You should see errors posted in VCDS under engine.

I had:

1 Fault Found:
18613 - Performance Malfunction in Cooling System
P2181 - 000 - - - Intermittent
Freeze Frame:
Fault Status: 00101000
Fault Priority: 0
Fault Frequency: 6
Reset counter: 187
Mileage: 63262 km
Time Indication: 0
Date: 2011.12.22
Time: 15:10:27


Freeze Frame:
RPM: 2080 /min
Mass Air / Rev.: 223.5 mg/str
Temperature: 78.0°C
Part Throttle
Temperature: 12.0°C
Speed: 102.0 km/h


Readiness: 0000 0000

This was the thermostat being lazy, a new one sorted it. I got an indi to do mine as weather was bad at time.

Personally, I'd be tempted to put new coolant in. Also you could look to see if you have much carbon build up on the intake valves.

All the best.

Andy

What apole said. Don't forget, modern car temperature gauges aren't really gauges, more customer reassurance devices. They are designed to indicate 90 at a range of temperatures which may be encountered under normal conditions. Stuck open or opening early will give you the symptoms you have. You can log the temperature outputs from cold with VCDS which will show you more about what's going on.

Gents, thank you both for your the replies. I figured it was the stat failing, I shall get one ordered and swap it out next weekend hopefully. I'll stick VCDS on later to confirm too.

Hi.
Don't know if this is too late but if your changing the thermostat get some inlet manifold bolts as they tend to snap when putting them back.

not a bad job but weather getting too cold for me. If you need mor info give me a shout.

Dave