Re: 1950 Packard 288 Auto overheating HELP

Posted by Rusty O\'Toole On 2010/2/1 12:45:17

We don't change thermostats anymore. In the 40s it was customary to change them with the seasons. I suppose the idea was to get more heat out of the heater in winter and prevent overheating in summer.

Or maybe you were supposed to use the colder thermostat in winter to prevent boiling off your alcohol antifreeze? Until you brought it up I hadn't thought of this subject in 40 years. Now I'm not sure if you use the lower temp thermostat in summer or winter.

Generally speaking it pays to run the engine as hot as possible. Newer cars use high pressure cooling systems and hi temp thermostats for this reason. If you could get your old cooling system to hold 16 pounds pressure without blowing you could run a 195 thermostat. Your engine would run cleaner and produce more power and better mileage.