It's been fairly cold here in the mornings lately in Orange County, CA, and I've been having some trouble driving my '95 Formula to work. The windows are fogged over from the cold and I can't see crap when I have to drive up this huge hill that faces directly into the sun (not to mention I'm freezing my *** off).

Basically, the car seems to be running too cold. I tried letting the car idle and warm up for a few minutes to see if it would bring up the temp enough to use defrost; no luck. Even after 8 minutes the temp gauge needle didn't even enter the markings. When I start driving it for a few minutes it does creep past the 160 mark but not by much. At that point the air blowing out is room temperature at best.

The heat does work fine on days that aren't so cold.. as soon as the temp gets to the 1/4 mark on the gauge or so it blows nice and hot. So I don't think the heater core is the culprit. The car runs really, really nice and cool even on 95+ degree days idling in stop and go traffic.

Info on the car:

'95 Formula six speed, 103k miles
160* thermostat
all stock except for SLP Loudmath catback and SLP coldair, Granatelli mass air meter

Would changing out the thermostat for stock help anything or is there something else causing my car to run too cold?

 

its just the thermostat, my car started the same thing this winter after i did a swap to a 160 in the summer.. now it hardly gets over the 160 mark with temps being around 30-40 =/ if it gets any colder im swapping back to a 180 lol

 

Same here. i really dont see the point in the 160 deg thermostat but mine came with the car.