Is it safe to use a 180 with the stock chip? I only drive the car in the summer and the thermostat gasket is leaking anyway. The car seems to run around 210ish with the 195 in it now. Or would it be better to wait and get a 160, with a chip to match.

 

A 180 would work quite nicely.

 

I personally have a 160 in both of my cars, 89 IROC and 87 GTA. THe IROC has a stock chip. Now when I did that I removed the screens from the maf, relocated the mat sensor, adjusted the base timing to 12 degrees along with the 160 thermo and I did in fact feel that it did help in my cars performance. I always noticed that my car pulled harder when it was at a lower temp like 180is than when it did when it was at 220. But in stop and go traffic the thermo will not make a bit of difference my car runs at 220 then, just takes longer to get there. Once your going down the highway you will notice that it will run around 180 to 160ish, mine does. As for winter driving my car provides me with enough heat if not to much while crusing down the interstate at 75. If that were my car I would go with 160. I have been told that moving the mat sensor on a maf car won't make a difference but it will on a map car such as yours have fun

 

It won't make it run any cooler in stop and go type driving, only on the highway type driving.

If you want to lower the stop and go temps, then you need to change the fanswitch in the pass side head to a lower operating one, or change the fan on/off points in the PROM.