How to Remove Car Thermostat Housing

Video Transcript

"NATHAN MCCULLOUGH: Hi. My name is Nate McCullough on behalf of Expert Village. In these clips, we're going to talk about the proper way to remove and replace your vehicle's thermostat. In this clip, we're going to talk about the proper way to reinstall your vehicle's thermostat and the engine thermostat housing. I have my thermostat right here in hand, I'm going to sit it on top of my intake plenum and I have my thermostat housing. What I'm going to do is take and seat my thermostat into the lower intake manifold where it goes and sits right in there. The location is going to vary widely depending upon the make and model. Generally, however, they are in the intake manifold. You'll see it's seated right there. You want to make sure it's seated good and flushed and that there is no debris on the intake side that will affect your sealing surface. I'll take my thermostat housing itself and slip it down into position over my thermostat. And once I have it in place, I'm going to go ahead and start my bolts. It is a good idea to start all of your bolts before tightening any of them down. That way, you can ensure that all of the bolts will be lined up correctly. If you were to tightened one bolt down, just throw the bolt in and tighten one down, then you may not be able to start any of the other ones. For some of the harder-to-reach bolts, you may find it necessary to take and just remove the ratchet from your socket end extension assembly and slip the bolt into it. And from there, you can go ahead and get a little bit better reach down into some very remote locations. Okay, once you have all three of them or two of them, depending upon your particular case, start it and hand tight. It's okay to go ahead and torque them. You're going to want to use the start pattern when you're torquing down any kind of gaskets including a thermostat gasket. And the concept is pretty much to go from one bolt, you just have to pick one and start with it, to going to the next farthest one away. So, from there, we're going to hop right up to here and we're going to run this one down. All right. And that is the proper way to install your vehicle's thermostat and the thermostat housing."