Tutorial for changing thermostat...

Hey, i've searched and found some discussion whether or not to change a thermostat but no tutorial on the process (2007, 6-speed, dbl cab).

Is there one on here that i'm not finding?

The outside temperature has been about -25 to -30degC (that's probably been about the average for the past 2 weeks) and the truck has been running fine but the other morning after 5min idle and about 5-6km drive, my engine temp gauge red-lined while it was blowing cold air in the cabin.

This happened last winter also, during some colder weather.

In your collective experiences, if a thermostat is fubar'd, does it just stop working all together or can it work intermittently?

 

Temperature redlined and no heat from the heater is not a thermostat problem. That's a very low coolant problem or frozen coolant problem.

 

My truck was running fine, too....turned out to be a headgasket.

No tutorial that I know about. I've changed mine out a few times. What do you need help with?

 

The process to change the thermostat is really easy. Just take off the radiator hose from the thermostat, remove the old thermostat, install new one, replace the hose. IMHO if you do it, you may as well replace the radiator hoses and change the coolant as well. That's what I did, didn't take long and was pretty easy.

 

If your cooling system t-stat does not open, your engine can overheat, but as stated above, first check coolant level and condition(fozen?).

 

Ok, thanks. That might just be it.

 

Sounds easy enough. I’ve changed up thermostats on other vehicles just not at Tacoma yet so I was just looking to read through the tutorial before hand to prepare for any tricky situations.
After reading a couple of the other replies I think I’m going to leave the thermostat alone and just flush my coolant because it may be a bit diluted from when I changed a rad hose last year and I topped it off with a bit of water before adding more coolant.