HELP!!!! i broke my car!!!!

[Wesleyrpg]

hey all,

was feeling adventorous tonight, so i thought i'd have a go at replacing the thermostat on my VN series 1 V6 calais, i replaced the throttle body easy enough a few weeks ago so i thought it couldn't be much harder than that!

Everything was going well, even the thermostat housing came off without much force, but to my dismay, the damn thing wont go back properly. It seems to have a 2mm gap on one side and about 5mm on the other!

How the hell do you get the thermostat housing to sit properly and even, and how does one bolt keep the housing secure?

HELP!!!!

[VN_Luke]

is the thermostat in the right way dude? has the old gasket been cleaned off it properly?

[Wesleyrpg]

yeah cleaned it up quiet well, and yes i did put the thermostat in the right way. its the stupid 1 bolt design of the housing thats got me stumped, can't get it to sit right.

[greenfoam]

Sometimes it's hard tp push it all the way, bit of wriggling around and maybe some oil or something and it should be OK : ) do you have the hose on or off at this stage?

[Wesleyrpg]

i've tried with and without hose, will leave it overnight and start fresh on it tomorrow, might even replace the housing and that rubber pipe while i'm at it.

im also going to install the housing without the thermostat, just to see if its the thermostat thats blocking it.

[greenfoam]

Yeah it's rule number one, if you are pulling something off replace the hoses! because by the time the thing you are pulling off is busted the hose wont be far behind. The other day I was giving my car a rev with the bonnet up and next thing I see is a high pressure spray of water going all over the place (seeing it from inside the car looking into the engine bay) so I go OOOOOOO that's bad, anyway it was an exploded heater pipe from the water pump, and while I was fixing that I discoverd a few other hoses that would happily break in half with a bit of bending so I went to Holden and invested in a heap of new rubber bits

[Wesleyrpg]

what a nightmare, but it's finally back together and up and running! i tried fitting the housing without the o-ring........fitted perfectly. Then used some vasceline, to help convince the o-rong to sit in place.

NEVER EVER AGAIN!

[pandaman]

what a nightmare, but it's finally back together and up and running! i tried fitting the housing without the o-ring........fitted perfectly. Then used some vasceline, to help convince the o-rong to sit in place.

NEVER EVER AGAIN!

Awww come on, that wasn't too bad! It's just a matter of keeping a calm head and thinking it through rationally. Admittedly I've had the same feeling at times, doing the entire cooling system on the old XE was fun like that, water pump gasket didn't wanna seal properly (cheapest aftermarket pump I could find, suspect it didn't sit as flush as it should have). Took me two goes at it.

[Dayvo]

Good ol' Vaseline eh , a mans best friend

[TheIceman]

what a nightmare, but it's finally back together and up and running! i tried fitting the housing without the o-ring........fitted perfectly. Then used some vasceline, to help convince the o-rong to sit in place.

NEVER EVER AGAIN!

seems like it was pretty easy replacement, they normally break off half the time when you pull them off because they are corroded in.

[HsvPlayBoy]

LOL its a Bitch ta get straight back in LOL i had the same prob once i will never forgett it i used greese ta get the thing back in Cheers!!