Hotter Thermostat for 02 golf

Does anyone know the hotest thermostat that can be found for an 02 golf?

Why do you want to run it hotter? I doubt it will help in the cold weather since the engine hardly produces enough heat to warm it up.

I believe 190 is all you can get. And if you could get a higher one, it would not warm up any faster. Joe

NAPA has a 195F thermostat for the ALH engine (what's in that car). Mine holds ~200F with the entire front of the car blocked off.

Their is ZERO reason to run a thermostat different from that installed originally.

You can't "fix" anything doing this but can cause problems.

Engineers know what they're doing.

I just put in the dealership 87C and it starts regulating at 87 and stabilizes at 90C (194F).

I only changed mine because after driving indefinitely, even up mountains, I could not break 74C coolant temperature. I verified this with a thermocouple and a meter, and the ECT probe is accurate. It turned out that I could put a glass in the microwave, and with the water at 78, the valve would open, and not fully close until below 73C. I guess after 9 years it got tired and started regulating at lower and lower temperatures.

For some reason it must have been close enough to not set P0128 coolant valve regulation limit not reached. I only noticed when I wanted to see how hot I could get it under full load and 77C seemed really low for going up a 7% grade for several miles.

Maybe now my fuel economy will go even higher (fat chance at 56.1/70MPH)

I don't see why you would want to go any higher than the normal setting though. 90C was probably chosen as the nominal temperature to keep combustion efficiency as high as possible without compromising lubrication, cylinder head cooling, or maybe even emissions.

I seen someone mention something about a 95C thermostat, but I can't find who it was... Anyone know off the top of your head a part number for the 95C or remember who had it in their car?

FWIW, You won't cause ANY problems raising engine temperature, unless you start getting over 225-230F and run the car hard... The fans don't come on until almost 215 anyway... They would come on much sooner if 200* would cause any problems..

I have found that time will make these thing get a little lazy. With winter coming on I have found that my engine temp is a little lower now, but I am to lazy to replace it. The one reason for the thermostat is to control pollution (emissions) and they need to control engine temp to do that as a cold engine will cause the engine to be supplied with more fuel. Another reason is to control expanding of the engine parts. We all know that if a engine gets to hot the pistons will expand so much that they will seize in the cylinders. Joe

I replaced my thermostat a couple of years ago after sitting in a traffic jam with my family, it was -10degC outside, in the day time, and the allthough the engine was running the temperature indicator kept dropping and vents started to blow colder and colder. It was scary. I reluctantly revved then engine to 2000 rpm just to stay warm.

After replacing the thermostat (with the oem part) I coming home one night, again -10degC at 2am and found someone on the side of the road, waiting for a tow truck, I invited them to wait in my car and I idled it off and on for 2 hours waiting for a tow truck with plenty of heat (I know, not supposed to idle it, whatever)

I would replace the thermostat sooner than later.

The engine has to get really hot for pistons to seize like that.. Usually it's in the 400* range where things start to seize up... You also need to heat the pistons up a LOT faster than the cylinder walls to make it seize too.. If an engine slowly overheats you'll be suprised how hot it'll get before it shuts down..

Most of the higher engine temps now are more for emissions and fuel efficiency like you said.. It's also easier to tune an engine that runs within a tight temp range..

I know it's not a valid comparison, but my mother's Tahoe overheated so bad on Saturday that it melted the plastic right out of the temperature sending unit on the side of the cylinder head. It also melted some wire loom that was on top of the intake manifold... Apparantly the gauge wasn't working properly when the water pump went.. It got driven until it was pinging so badly it sounded like a diesel...

Now I don't know how hot it has to get to melt the temp sender, but I imagine it's pretty freakin' hot, LOL... This isn't the first time in the truck's 208k that it has been overheated like that.. Actually I believe this is the 3rd time.. Still never had the valve covers off the engine..