I was told by a mechanic when the coolant was being changed that the thermostat housing on my '95 F150 300 I6 had a hairline crack and they had to replace it. He said ford had problems with the thermostat housings and the new one is upgraded to fix the problem. Does this make sense? Anyone ever heard of this before? Unfortunately I failed to ask for the old housing. I am suspicious that the bozo that did the job cracked it because he didn't know what he was doing and, rather than pay for it, stuck me with the bill and a story how they were doing me some sort of favor by catching this potential problem before it got worse. A likely story! Of course, there is nothing I can do about it now.

 

The thing is they do crack , but if yours was cracked it would have leaked , & I mean leak . They have been aluminum for yrs & very easy to break if they are old & if they are over torqued . There is nothing revised about them that I know of . Some have a threaded hole for a sensor , some dont . All the ones Ive seen break will break off right at one of the bolt holes . I broke mine a yr or so ago & I didnt even reach the torque limit when it broke . What gets me is they list for like $57 , Ford sells tons of them & they have about the same amount of aluminum as a 6 pack of beer cans .

 

Thanks, They charged me about $57 for the thing, which I thought was terribly high. If it really was their fault, they shouldn't have charged me. Now, given that they do break every now and then, the shop should factor that in to the overall price of changing the thermostat to cover those occasional losses, rather than dumping it on the customer. Or, if the customer is going to be responsible, they should warn me up front of the possibility. Oh well.

 

Aftermarket housings are available for much less than the OEM Ford part. *Some* aftermarket housings are cast iron...install one & you'll never have to worry about it cracking or corroding.

I did a quick search at carparts.com & found 3 aftermarket housings ranging in price from $12.10 to $31.68.