Any ideas as to why someone would do this to the thermostat? Effectively the same as running without the thermostat.
My daughter bought the car one week ago and at first I noticed that the fan would run all the time. Which I found somene installed a jumper at the switch. I checked the switch and seemed to be working (thought may be on the high side). I removed the jumper and reconnected to the switch, seemed to be working normally.
Then we noticed that the temperature intermittently would go as high as 235*F while idling. As soon as she started driving the temp would drop back down to normal. I verfied that the fan was coming on normally. I thought maybe it had an air bubble, and after bleeding the system and refilling with coolant we still had the issue. I thought maybe the thermostat might be sticking a little bit and decided to check/replace it. And this is what I found.

 

Because they are lazy and could not fix the actual issue and wanted to hide it from you which they did sucessfully. Why did you not go ahead and replace it?

 

I did replace it. Sorry if I didn't make that clear in my original post.
It's still to early to tell if this solved the issue, as it seemed to be intermittent before.
I let the car run for 20 mins in the garage and took it for a run, so far seems to be normal.

Still trying to figure out what issue they were trying to "fix" by removing the guts of the thermostat. I know some folks believe that you don't need a thermostat in warm states like Florida.

 

They weren't, they were more then likely just trying to hide the issue.

I've seen tons of people do it. It's really sad that you have can't buy used Honda's anymore without being worried about getting screwed...