Ok so I'm on the final leg of getting my dirt track civic ready to race this weekend.
Purchased a set of quickcar gauges, the water temp sensor only place I could find was on the thermostat housing

I noticed that the gauge takes a long time to read warmth.

My question is 2 parts

1. Is the engine actually warm before the gauge registers?
Is the hose that comes out the bottom of the radiator in or out

The top hose gets quite warm before the gauge even moves off the needle at 140

After quite a while of driving around it will fiiiinally warm up to 180-190 ish

My second question is what thermostat do you guys recommend ?
I confirmed there is one in there but no idea what it is so gonna replace

Will be turning high rpms for 10 laps of 1/2 mile per lap

JDM B16 Engine

 

Having a sensor on the thermostat housing will be the slowest results due to the water not flowing through there until it gets up to operating temperature. I believe Honda put their sensor for temp on the head itself. Probably a much faster feedback. Really though, it should be fine. I believe your biggest concern is with temps going above 200ish and your gauge should report that without issue. Oh and 140F is quite hot to the touch so the hose would be hot before the gauge started registering it.

I'm not actually sure flow direction of the rad hoses. I thought I saw someone say it goes from bottom up which would mean fighting gravity but who knows.

As for the thermostat itself, I have heard over and over OEM is what is recommended. Quite often anything other than OEM thermostats cause problems.

Hope this helps.

 

yea thats what I was thinking

def gonna pick up an oem thermostat tomorrow

wonder if there is an adapter to get that sensor in the head

 

oh this is gonna be some fun stuff!

 

You dont see that everyday. Got any videos?

 

First race this weekend

 

To answer your question about which way the coolant flows, it flows from the top rad hose thru the radiator and out the bottom hose. When the coolant gets to the right temp, don't know exact temp offhand, the thermostat opens and flows the cooler coolant thru the motor. So having the temp gauge before the thermostat would cause cooler temps than the motor is running at but shouldn't be significant enough to worry about.