Thermostat housing leak

[MarkZX3]

Originally Posted by gary the wolf

all this for a cracked housing,,,mine took a hour to change

LoL, if you put a stock one back on and keep the car long, you will put several more on, they are made to LEAK!
The only thing that Doorman did with the housing was use a little thicker walled inner tube for their seal, its going to leak again.

After you change it two or three more time you can get it done in well under an hour.

I did think about using cork gasket material instead of the paper. I know one thing I'm not going to use the inner tube seal again! I'll Epoxy it solid to the head before I do that, you don't have to take the housing off to change the thermostat so it could be permanently bonded to the head for all I care.

Mark

[amc49]

Dorman products suck, one reason people change housings so much. They use absolutely crap plastic. I sold enough of them and then warrantied almost all of those very soon after.

Permatex #2 was always gasoline soluble, I used to clean it off parts in the '70s by soaking them in fuel. RTV is too but in a different way, it doesn't dissolve but releases its' grip as it shrivels up into mush. Both seal and survive based on the fact that once pinched in place the solvent can only attack it in a thickness of say 1-2 mils. Even though it dissolves, it would take years to get across the width of the sealing surface.

I have 3 zetecs and haven't changed a housing yet. 39 total years of use there..........

[MarkZX3]

The first two housings I had were OEM housings that was the reason for the change to anything but factory. Then when I got the Dorman housing I found out that the housing was a factory housing with a worthless pre-installed thermostat (that didn't work) and what looked to be a little thicker slice of inner tube seal. But Dorman didn't mold the housing I got, just repackaged an OEM.

Which brings me to a suggestion for others here, if you end up with a Dorman housing I for sure wouldn't leave there cheap thermostat in it! the one in mine never OPENED the first time!

Mark

[amc49]

I could not agree more. Dorman has a stranglehold on small OEM type (note I say type, not OEM, they look same but definitely aren't!) parts, unfortunately, they apparently contract with Chinese shops that use some of the crappiest materials on the planet. Their plastics suck, their rubber products instead of stretching like rubber should simply tear with hand force only, and not a lot either. Some steel parts can work OK but others are so low quality steel that they fail very quickly. Their front end parts like balljoints are absolute garbage, don't let the lifetime warranty fool you. No one makes replacement plastic coolant reservoirs, Dorman saw that as a market and upon filling it, gets back almost every reservoir they sell when they crack to fail, often in two weeks or less, many in a day. They make parts for OEM, but hoping they are somewhat better quality, certainly no guarantee of that though. I wouldn't trust even a junk motor to one of their thermostats, I've seen them commonly stuck open right out of the box.

At the last of my time at the store they were moving into instrument panel replacement gauges in the hundreds of dollars, every one I sold came back almost instantly as having one thing or another wrong with it.

As long as no competition comes forward to force them and other companies like Anchor mounts to make better quality parts they will continue to cynically supply the world with worthless crap and charge top buck for it. I go out of my way to avoid products from either company having sold and returned so many of them. Buyer beware!