OK guys, Lil back story. 09 2.2l has about 99000 miles. Last few weeks the car started creeping up in temp. Highest it ever got was 234. With the way it was doing it my dad and I both thought it was the t star and needing radiator flush. So today I tackled the tstat. Now in 110° Las Vegas weather with the ac on full blast it's sitting and staying about 216° after driving about 10 miles. Do you think I still have an issue????

 

Welcome to the site, which brand t-stat and which coolant did you use? Did you burp the cooling system?
If air is still trapped in the cooling system then you might have an issue, park the car front end higher then the rear, let it cool off over night, remove the rad cap, top up the coolant.
I'm hoping you used the correct AC Delco stat and Dexcool!

 

Hi Wirewoman, to the forums!!

Last time I was over there in the summer, I was running hotter than that. DexCool has a 5 year service life, so you may still need to change that.

Thermostats usually fail open, causing the engine to take longer to reach operating temp. So it's possible that the partial coolant flush that happened when you changed the T-stat is responsible for the cooler operating temp. Not much coolant is lost to that procedure though, so uncertain.

Make sure to burp the system well after changing the coolant, as follows.
Continue checking the coolant for a few days, as above.

Edit: OB, you beat me, these slow fingers!

 

Thanks for the reply guys!!! Yes I went to the dealer and bought the ac Delco good tstat 75 bucks... and I put the dexcool back in. I left it up on the ramps and let it run after I filled it with the heater going and kept topping off for about 10 min. I pulled the lower hose and drained over a gallon of coolant out when I was changing the tstat. I'm suppose to drive 650 miles Thursday to my parents that's why I'm trying to make sure I got the problem fixed as I don't wanna break down in the middle of no where with 2 kids. This forum rocks I read up before I tackled the project. It did take longer than 30 minutes tho....

 

Hmmmm... you only changed a little over half of the old coolant. Part of the drain procedure is to remove the drain bolt from the water pump. Together with removing the thermostat and opening the petkawk(or removing the lower hose from the radiator), drains most if not all the coolant(close to 2 gallons).

 

I would check that the fan is working when it is supposed to. It should come on at about 219F or when the AC compressor is running. Any temp between 180F and 219F is "acceptable", about 190F is optimum.

The t-stat keeps the engine warm, it does not want it under 180F. It has no control in cooling, the fan does that and the fan can't cool the water unless it is moving through the system.

 

Just like the fish on finding Nemo...... BUBBLESSS BUBBLE BUBBLE MY BUBBLE

 

1. Keep the OIL changed. If it's no longer clear but dark it contains heat capturing particles which will NOT cool properly adding to the overall heat of the engine. 2. Don't sit idling with the A/C on and expect the car to ever cool down at high outside temps as the waterpump does NOT circulate the water to any significant amount. 3. If the car is running anywhere at or over 215 deg. then try turning OFF the A/C for a few minutes which halts the super heated A/C gas flowing through the front half of the dual cooling radiators. This allows that front radiator to actually cool down which THEN allows that cooler air to flow through the actual motor cooling radiator. 4. It is imperitave that the electric cooling fan for these two items runs properly.