Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Duratec Performance Where to get a 160F T-Stat???

Why???? You know, I haven't gone off in a technical rant in the regular forums in a few years at least. I just don't waste the time these days anymore. However, for YOU I'll make it a special occasion and give you something to chew on.

So I ask again, Why????

All lowering the operating temp does is make cooling less efficient and if it is hot outside the engine will still run at the same temps as it would with the higher t-stat.
Minimum operating temp is determined by the T-stat, maximum operating temp is determined by the cooling capacity of the radiator combined with the turn-on temp of the cooling fans. So why, pray tell, are you guys always following everyone else and putting in the 160 T-stat?
There is only one area that I could consider it helping in and that is in mild ambient temps below around 80 F AND not in city driving but on the highway where a steady-state of heat transfer can occur.

..."Newton's law of cooling describes the rate of heat transfer from a solid surface into a fluid medium.

Q= hA(Tsurf - Tamb)

This relationship is valid for both forced and natural convection. T (amb) is the ambient fluid temperature.

"h" is defined as the convective heat transfer coefficient. This proportionality constant contains all the nonlinearities associated with convection.
"


Or Differentially, the way I remember it is:

dQ/dT= -kA/C(T-Ts)

All this really states is that the rate of cooling increases with teh temperature difference between the hot object and cold object.

If ambient is 80F then you have a dT=80 degrees. (dT is the temperature difference)
If however ambient is 120 like in Phoenix AZ, then you only have a dT=40. (assuming your engine actually ran at 160)
So the smaller difference in temp means that you will cool off much slower, therefore you will transfer less heat out of your engine in the same time than if it were at a higher temp, and so on. Don't forget, this follows Newtonian cooling, therefore it is exponential and it will cool much faster initially then slow down as the dT gets smaller

Therefore, my point isn't that the 180 is better than the 160, it is that the 160 is NO better than the 180 and a waste of time and money...unless your old one is no good. Then you have to remember that you may have reduced heating capability with the heater and changes to engine warm up time, and the reduced efficiency of combustion in very cold temperatures...20F is a large change in terms of heat energy.