Engine temperature gauge

[ridgers84]

Hi guys. Need to pick your brains' again. The in laws have a 2006 veccy 1.8 vvt Sri. And the father-in-law was last night telling me that his temp gauge has stopped working. (luckily, I told him of a fantastic website I can go on for advice ;-) ) Have done a quick search on here and was thinking it could possibly be the thermostat, can anyone either confirm or advise differently? If it helps he says that the heater doesn't get as warm as before.

I did the pedal test and it came up with the code 0586 - from googling the fault code it looks like that is something to do with the cruise control (which has never worked in his car) and unrelated to this problem.

Many thanks for the replies......


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[chrisvectra]

Easy test is to switch off the heaters and put them onto cold and let the car idle for a while and see if temp gauge then moves but it does sound like the thermostat is goosed

[ridgers84]

Is this an easy fix, ie: can I do it myself???


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[Niall83]

Should be able to. I just ordered one for mine 1.8vvt. Going to give it a go myself.

[disco dan]

i replaced mine last month, gota do the whole housing but its no trauma to do, only a couple of torx bolts iirc

[coldo]

Yep...I would say the thermostat is away...

I did this myself recently using the guide on here... Took about an hour (lots of tea was drunk) and was an easy DIY job.... You will be 100% able to do this... Just take your time..... I also bought the full housing and gasket (genuine GM part) whcih was arround £40 and £5 for th coolant etc... got it all for vauxhallworldparts

As for the Cruise control... Use the guide on here on removing the stalk... Try an electrical contact cleaner on it first, failing that buy one off ebay and swap it out... I did this and it fixed my cc fault imediatly.

[rich r]

Thermostat failure is very common on the 1.8s (both VVT and non-VVT). My current one lasted a year before failing again.

Unfortunately it's too cold and snowy out there at the moment for me to change it, so I've settled for the 1980's Ford Cortina method of blanking off part of the radiator with a piece of cardboard for now. I was getting 72C maximum with the heaters off doing a steady 70mph on dual carriageway. Now I'm managing 85C or so, which is much better.

Once the weather sorts itself out, I'll change it

[coldo]

Thermostat failure is very common on the 1.8s (both VVT and non-VVT). My current one lasted a year before failing again.

Unfortunately it's too cold and snowy out there at the moment for me to change it, so I've settled for the 1980's Ford Cortina method of blanking off part of the radiator with a piece of cardboard for now. I was getting 72C maximum with the heaters off doing a steady 70mph on dual carriageway. Now I'm managing 85C or so, which is much better.

Once the weather sorts itself out, I'll change it

A proper old scholl fix there.... Loving it!

[coldo]

This was my thread on it...

http://vectra-c.com/forum/showthread...ine+thermostat

and this is a how2 for removing it...

http://www.vectra-c.com/forum/showthread.php?t=122762

I would buy a full unit including the casing etc as it comes with a casket and seems to prove more relaiable long term compaird to the internal replacemnt part from ebay...

[rich r]

I think that's the issue with mine - when I bought the car the thermostat had failed, so I told them to replace it under warranty. They fitted a non-GM thermostat in the original housing as it's obviously cheaper to do it that way.

This time, I'll do it myself, and use the full casing kit. Might cost more, but if it means it doesn't stick open (or maybe comes loose allowing coolant to leak round it?) then it's worth it.