Yeah as far as drilling holes in the thermostat, I wouldn't...I don't like to do things like that to parts that shouldn't need them...you've been through so much,if I was you I'd say screw it and take the thermostat out and leave it out.put the housing back together like it's in there but leave it out..start it up and see what happens...if it still overheats,you will know for sure it's something else...process of eliminating that as the culprit... it will not hurt anything to drive it around like that..I would watch it closely to make sure it don't overheat....if it don't put in a new one..a STANT name brand not a cheap one....if it gets hot....I'm thinking bad head...or gaskets.. just my openion....try the no thermostat thing you have nothing to loose...sometimes a bad thermostat will cause a truck to over heat and that causes damage to the engine like cracking the head warping the head blowing the head gasket..so it might have been the thermostat in the beginning but by failing it caused other damage...that's why a new thermostat won't solve the problem...man I feel sorry for you...

 

Like this guy said lol if he only knew I'm going thru the same thing lol

 

For the people that mentioned drilling holes in the t stat or going with a 160* stat need to not give advise like that. There's a thing called open and closed loop and if the stat has holes in it or a 160* is installed it will stay in open loop and never go into closed loop, unless it's custom tuned for the lower than factory stat(which is 195* IIRC)

Running in open loop all the time doesn't hurt the motor per say but it doesn't allow the motor to run to it's best and mileage will suffer.

Wayne

 

Spot on Wayne..couldn't have said it better,but would have probably taken longer......you know since we've been talking about this trying to help this guy I remembered back in the eighties I had a Ford van I drive to work everyday and the heat gauge in it always read it was hit but never boiled over or broke down on me but I could just smell it all the time...I took good care of it and it just always ran hot...one day it it just went from zero too broke down on the highway in just minutes...I did all the right things and it was back to normal until about a month later and same thing except this time I was down town big city 5 lanes a nd could get pulled over right away....it. ruined the moter.....I had a shop professionally rebuild it from the ground up and that bitch ran hot from day one...I never figured it out....sometimes they just do **** we can't explain....damn van......

 

When i said drill a hole, i meant 1 hole. All the tstats i had on my 97 and 98 had a small ball thing on the outside rim to allow coolant to pass through. i drilled another hole on the opposite side of the same diameter. I would never drill a bunch of holes as its like not having a tstat there in place.

 

Now that you mention it,I do remember having stats that were Just like that....now I feel like an ***.I aoplagize,I did t mean to step on your toes at all.I hope he gets this figured out soon its start in to drive me nuts...again my apolagies...have a great day...