my point about it is you can buy a cheep one and it could last you for years or you could buy a real high dollar one and it could last you years. i guess if you have lots of money you can have the finer things in life(lol). no its a mechanical thing you have good ones and bad ones. oh well mines doing fine (napa one). knock,knock,knock,knock!

 

my point about is, i have already bought 2 cheap ones and luckily they both stuck in the open position. the engine would not come up to operating temperature, so it ran crappy. i am not a wealthy person, but 28 dollars will not break me either. i look for bargains and buy most of my parts at autozone, because of the guarantee. i know their parts are not the best in the world, but their guarantee is. i'm still learning about these old trucks, my current engine has about 20 k on the clock, so i plan to keep it for years.

 

i here you on that one, my truck never ceasted to amaze me. my poor old truck was badley abused by the previous owner and ive done spent so much money trying to bring it back to life that i sure am glad for auto zone and advance auto, because if i had to go to the stealership to get parts i could have bought a new one. seems like i fix one thing and two things break. ever since i owned the truck the brakes are crap on this thing, so ive been slowly doing a little at a time to get them wright and finely got them wright and it would stop on a dime. wasnt 5 hours later and the brake booster went out and it started running hot so its a never ending story on this thing. but i enjoy doing it and when i finely get it back in shape ill be looking forward to hooking on to my 32ft travel trailer and seeing how it does but not till i git those brakes up to par. sorry for the wrambling on ill shut up now (lol).

 

I replaced the stuck open thermostat in my truck early fall so I'd be warm and I'd quit abusing my engine by running it barely warm. I went down to autozone and plunked down my $5 and some change. It lasted a month and a half and stuck shut resulting in a toasted engine. Total cost was $2206.00.

The new engine came with a new thermostat. I'm not sure of the brand yet but it lasted about 3 weeks and stuck open when I was headed out on a 1K road trip. I could keep the engine in the middle of the 'normal' zone if I only went 60. It made for a very long trip.

When I arrived at my destination I figured I'd go over to NAPA and get a made in USA part that would hold up. They had a made in china version that looked like the autozone part. The offered some gasket material because they didn't stock the gasket. I pushed it back across the counter and went to the Ford dealer. They didn't have the part in stock and couldn't get it before I needed to head home. I figured a stuck open thermostat was better than one that might stick shut. Long trip home too.

I picked up the motorcraft part (E5TZ-8575-C). It was $25 with gasket. I'm hoping this one is a winner. I would love to be able to pay $25 for a part that works instead of ~$6 for a part that fails in short order. It's certainly worth my time since I'm doing the work and it would have saved me plenty over having to replace my original motor which only had 200K on it.

My .02...

 

crawler sorry to hear about your mishap with the thermostat. i know that had to really hurt, but my point about the wholething is it could have happened with a $25 stat from the stealership.

 

ALL parts fail, regardless of the cost, I have installed many New parts that were junk from the start, Price doesn't matter if the part works, and lasts, it is worth it in the long run.I will only run factory T-stats because in my experiance the cheaper autozone and napa stuff fail way to early and alot more often.

 

About a week ago my original equipment thermostat stuck closed. I bought a fail safe thermostat at autozone for $14.00 and put it in, the fail safe will only stick in the open position if it fails. I drove home for the holidays, 350 miles and parked my truck for two days.

Two days later I was driving around and the temp gauge was all the way cold. I pulled out the thermostat and it was stuck open. I bought the motorcraft thermo at Ford for twenty seven dollars and put that in. So far one hundred miles later all is well.

In my opinion the motorcraft thermostat is of much higher quality in terms of manufacturing, e.g. it looks more solid, better materials, hard to describe but it looks like more effort was put into the manufacture. The included gasket is roughly ten times thicker than the one that came with the autozone rattletrap. I would say you would be money ahead buying the motorcraft, epecially if you factor in the time required to change out the thermostat more than once if needed, and also if the cheaper thermostat gets stuck closed resulting in engine damage.

 

I have to agree with Bioford, no one likes to spend more money than they need to but when it comes down to quality on a little thing as a thermastat, well what can I say that hasn't already been said.