My '98 Olds Intrigue (3800) seems to take a long time to heat up, and the heat gauge never gets much above the one quarter mark. I changed the upper and lower intake gaskets last summer and when I re-assembled it I put a new thermostat in it. When I installed the new intake gaskets, I had read that it was somewhat difficult to purge all the air out of the cooling system after performing this job, and a way to get around that was to drill a 1/8" hole in the new stat, which I did, and filled the system -- topping it off several times until it was completely full. I noticed it never really develops full pressure in the system, but the coolant remains full. I have never pressure tested the cap. Anyway, now that winter's here, I am dis-satisfied with how long it takes this car to heat up, and with the fact that the temp gauge stays down around a quarter -- so I was wondering if my having drilled that
1/8" hole in the new thermostat would be enough to compromise the heating-up of the engine as I described?- posted
13 years ago