Changed the upper and lower hoses a couple weeks ago with new coolant and noticed that the temp gauge reads 1/4 away from the cold mark. Where as b4 it would read right in the middle of the gauge. Even after driving 30+ miles on the freeway it read at the 1/4 mark. But if I let it idle it will get to midway on the gauge but as soon as I start driving it goes back down to 1/4 mark. Whats going on? I used the 50/50 mixture of coolant and water. Thermostat?

 

broken thermostat

 

Indeed a stuck open stat would seem to be the obvious but as it worked fine before he changed the hoses the other possibility is an air lock somewhere in the system preventing full flow and more worringly perhaps a hotspot elsewhere.

Start your car from cold, leave at idle and hold onto the top hose for around 5 mins. If it gets gradually hot then the stat is stuck open. If it is cold for the full +- 5 mins and then all of a sudden gets hot then the stat is working.

 

I have the same symptoms, plus it will rise to halfway up the gauge if I'm stuck in traffic, and then back down to 1/4 when I'm moving. I assume it's the thermostat, but thanks for the simple test glowpug, I'll try that when I get the chance.

To be honest, it's not a great problem at the moment, but it does mean the car is slow to warm up inside in winter, or I have to have the temp set at maximum which uses the auxiliary heater.

Biggest rant is that the part is £150 and a bugger to get at apparently.

 

£150 nonesense. Chrysler do NOT make Thermostats. All you need to do is take yours out and go down to your local friendly auto factors and find one that matches. What you are interested in is outer diameter peak height from top of flange to top of stat and base height i.e. distance from bottom of flange to bottom of stat and MOST importantly opening temp which will be stamped on your old one probably 82 degrees celcius.

However over ad above the basic test I outlined above (which is an almost foolproof way of testing) you can do a visual test. First take the stat out and see if the valve portion is stuck open if so then the stat is knackered. If it is properly shut then dangle it from a piece of string into your kettle and boil the kettle. Near to the point where the kettle starts to boil you should see the stat starting to open. Obviously if you have acess to a decent thermometer that registers up to 120 degress celcius then stick that in the kettle and see if the stat open between 80 and 85 degrees. They will never be perfectly accurate there is always a deviation either side.

The purpose of the stat is to hold the water back from the heat exchanger (radiator) to enable the car to come up to operating temperature quickly. This reduces wear on the engine and also emmisions as a hot engine = complete combustion (or as near as you can get). You may well find that the stat from the earlier diesels and maybe even the petrol versions will work. Chrysler like most manufacturers will want to reduce costs by reusing the same part as often as possible and as such the don't reinvent the wheel. Also your same engine is used in LDV truncks and the Ford DUROTAG, MAZDA-BT50 and Ford Ranger. What's more you can also try

http://vmdieselspecialist.com/
and
http://www.jnlengineering.co.uk/

Remember what you have is a VM Motori engine NOT a Chrysler engine and these are used in many cars, forklifts, combine harvesters etc etc. When it comes to cars doing some research goes a long way as it says in the Bible, seek and ye shall find.

Case in point my wife drives a Fiat Multipla 1.9 Diesel. There is no Haynes manual for that car. However after doing some research I found that Vauxhall used the same engine in the Astra and guess what...there is a haynes manual for that car :-)

 

It was the thermostat.

 

I was quoting from this post - I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.

https://www.chryslerforum.com/forum/...ad.php?t=11158