Okay,
After the post I started thinking some more (alway a dangerous exersize for me) and I started wondering about the "throttling affect of the thermostat. From what I'm hearing this does occur and so the result is that though a 180 thermo is open at 160 it is throttled back (restricted) and not fully open. A 160 at the 160 is open fully. With the same flow of ambiant air over the radiator which will only have an "X" degree cooling affect on the radiator say 10degrees @ 70 MPH, a 160 thermo running at 170 degrees temp would run at 180 degrees or so, while the 180 thermo would run at 190 or so. This would be due to the ability of the radiator to only disapate 10 degrees at the ambiant temperture with the same air flow across it.
So, if this logic is correct I can now see why a 160 thermostat can reduce the running temperture below that of a 180. Heat disapation being a constant in a cooling system (it can only disapate so much heat), the lower the "full flow" setting of the thermostat the cooler the system should run.
NOTE: this would be true to a point since some restriction is required to allow for the heat disapation in the radiator, running without a thermostat can increase the running temp by not allowing the coolant enough time to transfer heat while running through the radiator.
or am I totally off base or do I pass this test??????????
Thanks,
Mike "monster"