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After serving me for more than 8 years, I had to say to goodbye to the trusty thermostat that had been working hard to maintain the engine temperature of my car.

This happened on last Thursday when my family and I decided to visit Genting Highland. The main purpose was that my brother in-law who came all the way from Jakarta wanted to get a Genting’s t-shirt. I don’t think they sell that in Petaling Street so, we had to go up there to get one.

After having our lunch at the Genting Sempah rest area, we proceeded with the climb and shortly after that, the car started to lose power and I noticed that the engine temperature started to rise. At first I thought that we had too much weight since we just had lunch but that should not be the case as the car is designed to carry 5 adults and yet we only had 4.

I switched off the air conditioning and that did not really help. As the temperature kept rising, I looked for a place to stop and fortunately or may be unfortunately (read till the end and you know why), a car with two mechanics happened to pass by and asked me to stop. Since I was planning to stop anyway, so I stopped the car.

One of them told me that he saw coolant dripping from my engine and smokes came out from under the hood. I opened up the hood and saw the cap to the coolant reserved tank was dislodged and one of them said that could be a signed of an overflow in the system that caused by a blockage at the thermostat. He asked my permission to open up the thermostat to confirm and since I have no other choice, I agreed.

He confirmed that the thermostat was faulty and the cheapest solution (that was not that cheap due to road side services) was to remove the thermostat and run the car without it. I was skeptical as the engine is the heart of the car and removing something from the heart did not sound like a good idea to me.

Then he explained to me that the function of the thermostat is to regulate the coolant flow to the engine. Since the engine is Japanese made, the thermostat was put there to ensure that the engine could be heated up fast during winter so that driving can be done smoothly within a short time and after that, the thermostat would just regulate the coolant flow so that the engine will operate at a safe temperature and avoid any over heating. In a simple term, It is something that controls the opening of the gate for the coolant to go into the engine.

So, in a country, such as Malaysia, our temperature is between warm to hot and even our cold morning would never be as cold as a winter in Tokyo, so the service of the thermostat was not really needed. In my case, the thermostat failed to fully open during the steep climb thus causing the engine to be over heated. It could have been worse if I did not stop in time. The radiator and the engine casing could have been damaged.

Anyway, after fixing back the thermostat housing and pouring 2 liter of coolant, he asked for RM 120.00 and I gave him RM 100.00 that he happily accepted. He told me that was a standard rate for any road side vehicle services. Who am I to argue anyway?

Without the thermostat, the car climbed up Genting Highland with no problem whatsoever and the temperature now is only ¼ up the gauge compared to almost ½ with the thermostat installed.

Anybody has any advice on this? Would it be okay for the car to run without the thermostat?

By the way, we did get the t-shirt and my son had a great time in Genting Highland!

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