- Thread starter
- #26
TSimage
Supporting VIP
- 1,842
- 17
- Jan 10, 2006
-
Sacramento,
California
I have a question for you on the thermostat housing. Am I understanding this right, all you did was turn it 180 degrees and then smooth out what used to be the back of the housing?
Not exactly... Let me quote the part you are referring to bellow:
A little attention to detail; Relocating the sensors on the TStat housing helps hide the wires as well. As you know, from factor the sensors all face forward but depending on your setup and how much you've deleted there are duplicate places the sensors can be mounted on the BACK of the Tstat housing thus hiding the only forward positioned wires considering an O2 sensor delete.
Here is how it comes factory with both sensors up front-
Now this is a little trick for all of you looking to clean things up a bit, also helps keep the wires from breaking so easily due to the sudden 180 degree turn they have to take. (stupid Mitsu engineers..)-
Its that easy and looks a million times better as well-
Now if you wanna get fancy you can take it another step and actually 'shave' your Tstat housing on the front so there is no evidence that that engineering mistake ever existed. Most will just put plugs or bolts in but if you are going through this much effort to tuck and shave an engine bay, don't skimp on the details.
Now get that bad boy welded up and you're good to go with your new Tstat housing that EVERY SINGLE DSMer will point at and ask you "Hey what car did you get that from?"
If I could do it again I'd polish it out even more to make it perfectly smooth or even glass it but it gets the job done
Now what I did was 3move the sensors from the FRONT of the housing. there are 2 areas in the back, one is normally plugged (many use it as a secondary water temp sensor location) and the other has a fitting on it for a useless water line. After you remove that you will find that the 2 annoying sensors that you removed will both fit in the 2 ports on the BACK of the housing. So this means no more broken wires (Face it almost ALL of us have broken those wires and if you haven't you will.. If you work on the car a lot then its only a matter of time)
So with the sensors in the rear it allowed me to shave the spots in the front and seal them off. You dont have to weld it either folks. Clean it really nice with some wire wheel and a dremel, get rid of ALL of the deposits and take it to bare metal. (Keep the threads, they are important, just make sure you get it nice and clean) After that you can use JB weld stick ('metal' or 'steel' versions) or something similar. Press it in with your finger behind it add pressure. Make sure you squeeze the hell out of it so that it goes into the threads most importantly and then smooth out the front of it. Allow some to follow the curve of the floor and even add an extra piece between the 2 holes to make it one solid piece. If you cleaned it right and did exactly as I mentioned then it will hold for the life time of the piece. No leaks, no cracks, nothin.
I also removed the upper hose fitting used for my over flow tank due to the fact there is also one of those on the back as well. (Score!) so now the entire front of my T stat housing is perfectly smooth and now instead of being an ugly eye sore its a very nice piece. The most important reason was to make the wire tuck look 10X cleaner and as a plus you avoid the issues that come with having the wires up front with that short 270 degree radius on the wires.
Hopefully that helps ya out.