Introduction and Initial Assessment

so today on the continuing refresh of my o7 Duramax AKA elvis doing the thermostats from what I understand the thermostats in this truck have been bad since the day I got it because it never runs more than like 150 160 and I didn't know it at first I was like Oh Diesel's run cooler because this is my first diesel truck it took forever to get warm in the cold and it was just like I could leave it cranked up on 90 basically the entire time and I just regulated by the fans because really wasn't that hot but I later found out that the thermostats fail when they fail they're designed to fail in the open position so that would be why it does this and I don't know if this is true somebody can confirm or deny this for me but one of the guys from PPE told me that these things actually have a different fuel map below a certain coolant temperature so if the thermostats stuck open and it's running cooler like - it could potentially be sacrificing fuel mileage so I don't know if that's true I'd like it to be true so we're gonna give it a shot this thing is extremely dirty this is broken when I got it fix that eventually and the engine bay is super dirty so don't hate me but thermostat housing is right here I've never done this before so we're gonna go through it together from what I understand you have to drop the belt pull move unbolt the AC and you can kind of just flop it out of the way I also read briefly that you don't need to do that because the whole thermostat lifts I'm gonna do a little more reading here real quick and figure it out either way this has to come off so let's go grab some Torx fittings