About Thermostat Housing Repair

Series Summary

Just as your body needs to warm up when you start to exercise, your car's engine needs to warm up when it starts to run. The thermostat provides control for your engine's warm-up period, and is located between the engine and the radiator. This temperature-sensitive spring valve stays closed during engine warm-up, preventing coolant from leaving the engine and circulating through the radiator until the correct running temperature is reached. The temperature at which the thermostat is meant to open is called the rating, and this may be stamped on the body.

If something goes wrong with your thermostat housing, it's good to know how to fix it yourself, rather than spending a lot of money on a mechanic. What's more is that knowing how to properly maintain a thermostat housing will prevent future damage. In this free video series, our expert will teach you how to repair thermostat housing with auto repair tips. You'll learn everything from using penetrating oil and a torch on the housing bolt to removing the bolt and cleaning a hole in the thermostat housing. Car repairs and maintenance doesn't have to be as hard as it may seem, so follow these videos and learn!

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Doug. I work with twenty great guys in St. Louis at Doug Jenkins Custom Hot Rods, and we're gonna do some work for you today on Expert Village. Now we're gonna repair a broken bolt in a 63 Cadillac water passage bypass to the housing. The '63 Cadillac is especially notorious for leaks on that fitting right there in the center where it plugs into the engine. But this one we need to replace the thermostat. And, in order to do that, we need to get the thermostat housing off. The first thing that happens when pulling that housing off, the bolt broke. So, we're gonna show you how to remove that broken bolt that's down in the hole and we're gonna show you how to carefully remove the other bolt in an attempt not to break it off. You'll have lots of opportunities as you work on old cars to deal with broken bolts, especially in water passages where they corrode in there."