Ok i have been plagued by the rather all to common heat problem on my little 305 tbi. Now i changed the fuel filter and with out the airdam (really need to get that on) the thing won't hardly heat up this morning. I mean some hard throttle mashing in 50*F weather has previously gotten the temp up within a few miles (say 5-10) with the fan running, and now with it off and whomping it hard it didn't even get up to 160 in about 6miles. Is it possible that my fuel filter was dirty enough that at wot it was causing a lean condition that was artificially heating the engine?

 

it could be that your thermostat is stuck open letting coolant flow at all times, this happened to mine a couple of months ago and it took forever for my car to heat up.

 

Brand new stat put in about 3 weeks ago so i am kind of doubting that.

 

Thermostat or temp gauge/sender.

 

Did you buy an ultra-cheap one? I have done that and had them fail after a very short time. If it is that, just be glad it failed in the open position.

 

Nope spent some money on it (not the fail in the open garunteed one though) and it seems to be warming up this afternoon (*60-68*) so it may have just been the outside temp, but still it just didn't want to warm up this morning.

 

just because you just bought and installed it a couple of weeks ago don't mean it can't be faulty and stuck open. get another thermostat and gasket and do it again.
mikeb

 

if you don't want to spend the money on another thermostat pull it out take it inside and put it in some wate rin a pot on the stove and turn it on and see what temp it opens at... i did mine which looked brand new (just bout the car...) but it would not open but about 1/4 of an inch and it was a 195 and this was in boiling water that it would not open...

 

T-stat wprks. It was a bit warmer yesterday so it actually warmed up. My temp guage is fairly accurate (kinda supriseing since my tach revs to over 7k on a wot shift and my speedo is about 7-8% off, not to mention my spastic oil pressure guage that reads fine until you let off the gas and it flings itself towards the peg past 60 then comes back down to just under 30), and i could watch it run up to about 220 and suddenly fall back to 160 and sit there. I dunno, atleast it starts and runs, not going to worry about it too much.