Technical Warning - Abarth Thermostat replacement!

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Technical Warning - Abarth Thermostat replacement!

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Apr 9, 2006
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I have just finished replacing the thermostat on my 5dr Abarth Selespeed.

If you find that your engine takes a long time to get up to tempereature, or you find the temp drops when moving at speed, but sits about right in traffic the chances are you thermostat is stuffed.

In brief, you have to remove the intake ducting and MAF sensor, remove the coolant return from rad, the 5 coolant pipes from the stat, then comes the fun bit. The thermostat. It is held on with 2 bolts, one is easy, it can be seen and got at with ease, one is under the housing, in a position where a ratchet cannot get to due to clearance issues, a spanner cannot get to due to depth issues and your hands can't get to due to anatomy issues, I ended up removing the lower bolt using the socket, attatched to a mini extension with a hole through its side, then I used a short socket extension to loosen the bolt, then unscrewed it painfully slowly by hand!

It is a hideous job! If you are even thinking about replacing yours, get a garage to do it for you! The original fit FIAT hose clamps alone are a nightmare to get off.

My hands look like I've beening pruning rose bushes by hand! I am literally all in bits.

As I said just a warning. Really, it took me about 2 hours all in all!

However, while the air ducting was off, ideal chance to give it a spray with carb cleaner, mine was covered in yuck.
 
So you had a leak on the left and stat gone on the right hand side ..your in the wars lately Andy..:(
 
So true! I'm trying to get all the niggly little things that are wrong with it sorted out before winter, the stat was a good change. Heats up a lot faster now, so much nicer on cold mornings, my saturday drive to Tesco this morning was much warmer, in about a quarter of a mile I had the beginnings of warm air from the heater, before I could get there and back without any warm air. Fab stuff.

I've stopped any leak from the left hand side hoses, but still losing coolant from somewhere, the car never drips coolant, just seems to vanish. The system doesn't overpressurise, or bleed into the oil, so I'm pretty sure it isn't a head gasket leak. I'm guessing a dodgy clip connection somewhere hard to see! I'm going to throw in another tub of rad weld soon and see if that helps.
 
Shouldn't be a problem, as long as it isn't overdosed, it only hardens in contact with air and heat, the inside of the stat shouldn't be in contact with any air as it is lower than the coolant level in the reservoir. If I've made a horrible mistake and it now stuffs the stat, at least I now know how to remove and replace the damned thing!
 
Yeah, last year I've done mine too. Everybody was saying that the gauge temp oscillating was pretty normal bla bla bla... I replaced myself the thermo, worst job ever I done on stilo by worst I mean incredible difficult, and since then 90º straight ;)
No matter if you're flooring it or just cruising...
 
Just a quick follow up, my car has been doing a very good job of getting up to temperature on its new stat, staying there no matter what and generally behaving well. No coolant leaks, no worries.

Was it a coolant leak you found or it suddenly stopped consuming coolant?


I'm facing similar troubles.
 
An interesting thread - recently the silver beastie (OK, it's not an Abarth) has developed an interesting habit of coolant consumption..... and the symptoms are very very similar. Balls :(
 
An interesting thread - recently the silver beastie (OK, it's not an Abarth) has developed an interesting habit of coolant consumption..... and the symptoms are very very similar. Balls :(

The biggest ball ache is finding the leak. On mine I got into looking as I had a leak from the front left hand side of the engine as I looked at it. It only leaked when the car was hot and running. The cause was the stupid clips that FIAT use to hold the pipes on the stubs of the engine. Replacing a few with proper jubilee clips fixed the problem. If you have a warm dry day, remove the undershield, of you still have one, then drive the car, and when you stop, put a big sheet of cardboard under the car, any little leaks will show up then. When I pulled the undershield off mine a while back, I found a dried up pool of what must have been coolant dried to a crusty blue scab below where the small coolant leak was. I hate my car!
 
As 'DIY' time hasn't been on my side of late I bunged the car into the Fiat dealers in Inverness - had a full service done at the same time (made sense) as getting them to check over the thermostat and a couple of other things.
Turns out the thermostat was goosed and speaking to the service manager when I was paying my £460 bill it's apparently more common a fault/issue on 'older' modern Fiats/Alfas than you might imagine :(

Interestingly, they've changed most of (but not all of) the retaining clips with jubilee type rather than standard Fiat items ;)

So far.... no more coolant loss and the car warms up better than I can recall in recent times, heater seems better too (which is logical I suppose) (y)
 
apparently i also have leak on the water pipe that leads to the heater. Its full of anti-freeze resin.
 
I have just finished replacing the thermostat on my 5dr Abarth Selespeed.

If you find that your engine takes a long time to get up to tempereature, or you find the temp drops when moving at speed, but sits about right in traffic the chances are you thermostat is stuffed.

In brief, you have to remove the intake ducting and MAF sensor, remove the coolant return from rad, the 5 coolant pipes from the stat, then comes the fun bit. The thermostat. It is held on with 2 bolts, one is easy, it can be seen and got at with ease, one is under the housing, in a position where a ratchet cannot get to due to clearance issues, a spanner cannot get to due to depth issues and your hands can't get to due to anatomy issues, I ended up removing the lower bolt using the socket, attatched to a mini extension with a hole through its side, then I used a short socket extension to loosen the bolt, then unscrewed it painfully slowly by hand!

Just changed my thermostat on my new stilo abarth selespeed. I agree its a horrible job, however the bolts weren't the worst bit; disconnecting the pipes was the worst. I've got breaking those fiat hose clamps off down to a fine art now using a hammer and a long shafted small flat head screwdriver

A tip from my expierence of this; make sure you've got a 13mm offset ring spanner to undo the bottom bolt on the thermostat, it makes it a doddle!;) I spent about half an hour trying and failing with mini extension bars and spanners then went to halfrauds and bought an 13mm offset spanner, came home and within 5 minutes the bolt was off! Also leave the top bolt in and undo the bottom bolt first!
 
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