So my car is running a little hot. I squeeze on the upper house and it's full. My first thought is that it's the thermostat is not opening. Well I took off the housing to find this. The thermostat is broken I don't see the other piece.i stuck my finger in the hole to see if I can feel it and nothing. I put a magnet on it. Still nothing. What would you guys recommend I do?

 

What are you working on? A magnet wont pick up brass.

 

I put a magnet to my new one and it picks it up.

 

Is the new one brass? You can probably just put a new one in and run it but since all we know is that it is a car with an engine its kinda hard to know whaere the parts fell to.

 

It looks like it's cut. I have never seen this before. It's inside the engine somewhere if it's in the engine at all. I got a grabber and tried to put it in there. Nothing found. I just put the new thermostat in and called it a day. I don't even know if the old owner put a new one in.

 

you say that the car is running hot. my guess is that the previous owner saw this hack-job as a possible solution ( which it, apparently, was not).

 

Wouldn't the piece be in the upper hose, or the radiator? That's the direction the flow would take it.

 

No the stat faces the opposite direction

 

the "bulb" should be in the engine, with the missing pieces facing the rad hose.
if it is in the engine with the "bulb" facing the rad hose, it will not work properly and the engine will overheat.

 

WAG - maybe it was installed backwards. Then it overheated (naturally) t-stat failed, and blew the innards inside the engine. Just thinkin' out loud, haven't had my coffee.

 

Looks like the one I put in our 1986 BII 10 years ago. It needed the shell to hold the rubber gasket on the BII.
It has not cracked a head after the mod to the thermostat.