How long do thermostats last?

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Just wondering how long do thermostat last since my Ford Frestyle seems to take a longer to warm up. BTW the cas has 144K on it.
 
it varies.

Jpn factory OE units can last an easy 10+yrs. I've seen aftermarket/domestic ones that go bad in about a year's time.

Given your mileage, I would just cut to the chase and replace it anyways.

Q.
 
Some cars also just take a along time to warm up.
Even with an entirely replaced cooling system, my little Saturn 1.9's used to take forever to warm up in the frigid cold. My Civic is slow too when its well below freezing. My Nissans were never an issue with the bigger 3.5 V6's. Also never replaced a thermostat on a Japanese car, but have on all 3 Saturns I owned.
 
Does it take a long time for the engine to warm up or for the cabin to warm up? It may not be the miles, but may be because it's a Minnesota winter.
 
What is winter? We haven't really had one around these parts this year.

If its taking longer than it did before, definitely suspect the Thermstat. I've had them last nearly 200,000 miles and I've had them bad out of the box.
 
do you have a scan tool capable of pulling the engine coolant temp sensor voltage? If so, it's easy to test to see if the thermostat is working correctly. If not, and you have a digital multimeter, you can still test it; however, you'll need to make a jumper wire or backprobe the sensor.

If you want to go that route, I can pull up the voltage parameters from the factory manual. Thermostats are one of those things I wouldn't change unless you know its bad. In my experience you're just as likely to get a bum one out of the box. I will say this car takes a while for the coolant temps to warm up--but if you've noticed a change, you should probably investigate it.
 
My Pathfinder has its original thermostat at 131k miles and it works fine still. I confirmed via a USB ODBII scan tool which can read the coolant temperature, and warm-up is still fast.
 
I'd change it. Mine was bad at 86k when I bought the Grand Am. No wonder there's a layer of varnish on the inside...
 
It was working find today, but on Sunday when it got down 13F it took a little longer to warm up.
 
on a 94 Accord EX a friend has, the t-stat lasted 260k miles and 11 years before he noticed the coolant temps quickly rising on the freeway.
 
thermostat is just a thermal-mechanical device which does come with finite service life (we call that cycles). They do and can become slow (lazy) as they get older, and when they fail, they would either fail open or completely closed.

Don't be cheep on replacing thermostat on your vehicle as soon as you feel like it's not what it used to. Chances are: it's becoming lazy or it fail to regulate your engine coolant temperature properly, causing excessive fuel consumption, carboning of your combustion chamber, engine runs cold on the highway, or overheats if it shuts off completely.

Q.
 
I've had them fail a few months after installing them. But, I usually replace mine when I replace the hoses and serp belt.
 
Original thermostat in my '06 Sonata is fine at 95K miles. My '00 Accent had the original thermostat until it failed at around 140,000 miles and >6 years of age. Engine started getting very hot, almost overheating, so I changed the thermostat and flushed the (original!!!) coolant, which was looking hideous. The car kept humming right along until I traded it in a couple years later.

Ford 4.6L Panther cars back in the 1990's seemed to need the thermostats replaced around 100K miles or sooner. Dodge trucks over the last couple decades seem to get easily over 100K miles with their original factory thermostats.
 
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Factory Stats on our fleet vehicles virtually last forever.

I cannot recall a failure at least in ten years or so.


What's your coolant drain & fill routine on those?

I wonder if being in Fl. helps vs. it seeing 20-30 below Zero part of their life.
 
I do have scangauge. The temp never rises over 200F degrees. Also no faults code. Like I said before if the temp falls down to 10f degrees and blow it takes about 7 miles of driving before it gets start getting hot. It used to take about 2 miles before it got hot. At least it's not overheating. I did order a new Motorcraft themostat from RockAuto.
 
Originally Posted By: tpitcher
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Factory Stats on our fleet vehicles virtually last forever.
I cannot recall a failure at least in ten years or so.


What's your coolant drain & fill routine on those?
I wonder if being in Fl. helps vs. it seeing 20-30 below Zero part of their life.


If you like it hot we do that well!

Note that after in-person consultation with a member of the G van team from GMC we now leave all new trucks cooling systems alone until something fails. This is typically a water pump at 200-250k miles or so.

Never an issue here, and no sludge or build up in the engines. They are always clean as a whistle.
 
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