Replacing thermostat

[hodgo]

Evening all,

As well as replacing my coolant hoses I'm changing my thermostat and otter switch for lower temp variants. Can I change to thermostat with the dist/ht leads etc in place? Looks fiddly but do-able?? I've seen a guide on rv8r website which advocates stripping all back which gives easier access but im not confident I could put it all back together properly as the distributor has to come out.

Thanks!

[black and green]

I'd remove the distributor. The bolts for the stat housing are awkward to get to with the dizzy in place. If you mark the position of the distributor housing with pencil or a scratch mark then that will be easy to line back up. Take a photo of the rotor arm orientation to make sure the drive gears line up.

[Bassfiend229hp]

Gotta say I did mine without removing the dizzy and it wasn't that much of a pain as far as I can remember ... but it was three years ago!

[minkybob]

Did mine pretty easy job no need to remove dizzy IMHO

[oily mist]

Also swapped mine without moving the distributor (I hadn't realised there was any advice to do so). I needed to do a swap to resolve over cooling.

Take care seating the housing back square - I didn't and a load of my lovely fresh coolant pi$$ed out down the front of the engine.

[sheel]

No need to remove dizzy, you may want to swing the alternator back a bit and use a wobble bar on the top bolt on the stat, the stat should sit in the housing recess by itself but if it wants to drop out pop a little bit of grease on the edge to hold it in, make sure you use a TVR spec stat, standard RV8 have a smaller bore and restricted flow compared to the TIV one and may cause you a temp problem in hot weather, I know from experience, but others have used a standard one with no probs

HTH Rich