I got the car put back together on Saturday, after changing the spark plugs. I had started to work on removing the thermostat, when I realized there was no way I was going to be able to get to it. At least not without spending another day doing tear-down, and the special tools required to disconnect the fuel lines. See, you have to pull the injectors and entire lower intake manifold off to get to the thermostat, which is firmly installed right at the bottom of the ‘V’ in the engine. *grumble*

So I put the car back together, to make sure I could actually get it that far apart and back in one piece, running the way it should.

No problems. It’s running better than it has in quite some time… but…

The thermostat is certainly stuck open. So I -has- to be replaced. Since I need to get the timing belt changed, I figure I’ll let the person who does the belt take care of the thermostat at the same time.

I simply do not have the tool to do the fuel line disconnect, and I don’t want to ruin the connectors. Otherwise, I would have kept taking things out, and worked my way through that third layer of engine to get to the thermostat.

Oh, and I ended up completely removing the EGR pipe, re-seating the compression fitting in the EGR solenoid, and putting it all back together. The Judges have reviewed the previous scoring, and determined the L300 was inappropriately rewarded. No point will be assigned for the EGR pipe.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 9:37 am and is filed under Core Dump. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.