2006 Chevrolet Suburban 2500 V8 6.0L 8th Vin Digit U Thermostat with Housing Assembly TRQ ECA92438

You wanna have a nice collection bucket, something that's gonna be able to collect and be able to recycle that coolant when we're done. We'll pull them over here, and if you were to look right up along the side of the radiator, on the bottom left-hand corner, you're gonna see right on the corner, there should be a little petcock, it's like a little twisty knob. You will turn that to the left and then, of course, as it turns to the left and started coming out, coolant will come out. It might make a mess, so, of course, be very careful. Now, our petcock is broken, but this is what it should look like right here. You would just grab this little knob, turn it counterclockwise, you can see it opening up and at this point, coolant will come out the side. If you were to look right down here, you're gonna see a clamp. If you were to look at the other end where it connects on to the throttle body, you're gonna see another clamp. You go ahead and loosen those up. Also, if you come right up here, you're gonna see an 8-millimeter bolt. If you loosen that up, you can take this right out. Once you have that out of the way, and the clamps are loosened, you can wiggle this around. I'm gonna draw it off of the throttle body right here. I'm gonna come right there, take it off right here, and remove it from the vehicle.

All right. You don't need to remove this, this is just for video purposes. At this point, we're gonna go ahead and use our serpentine belt tool or you can use a 15-millimeter socket. Get right on that tensioner, relieve tension, and slide the belt off of your idler pulley. There we are. I'd like to go ahead and take the belt right out of here so I can clearly inspect the whole thing. If you're worried about the routing, you can look right here. We're going to remove our AC belt. Some people will say that you don't necessarily need to, but I would recommend it because coolant's gonna be coming out and it could contaminate your belt. Twist that clockwise, and remove the belt. Now, we removed the fan clutch so you have a nice easy view for the video, but you don't necessarily need to do it for the job.

Next, we're gonna remove this clamp right here. Just loosen it up enough to get the hose off of your thermostat housing. As you can tell, this clamp is in poor condition and it's not functioning well, it needs to be replaced. Just give this a little tug, be careful because coolant could come out. Nice. Let's go ahead and remove that thermostat housing. Give it a little wiggle, should break right free. Now, we're just gonna clean up the area where the thermostat is gonna go. Now it's gonna be time to get our thermostat in here. You definitely wanna make sure that if you're not replacing the whole thermostat, you at least replace your gasket. Now we're gonna take our thermostat and our housing, we're gonna line up the gasket with this little air piton here. You can see it rattling around. That's going to line up right here, that's gonna be the upper area. Okay. Just slide that right in. Make sure the gasket's sitting flush and it's not damaged in any way or curled. I'm just gonna shoot off right towards the passenger side there. We'll go ahead and start in both the bolts before we tighten any of them down, and then we'll snug them up, and we'll torque them to 11 foot-pounds.

Now, it's time to get the hose on here. Just double-check your clamp, make sure it's in good condition. If it's not, go ahead and replace it. Just all the way on there. Slide it all the way so it bottoms out, and then snug up your clamp. Okay. Give it a nice check, make sure it can't spin around and it's definitely not sliding off. Next, we're gonna put on our AC belt. To do that, you're gonna use your ratchet with a short extension. Put the AC belt down in here where it's gonna go. It's gonna go right around the crack into that inner pulley area, okay? Line it up, bring it around. We'll get that close to the AC, just like that. I'm gonna see if I can get my extension and under here. Sometimes it can be difficult. If for some reason you can't, just go ahead and remove the belt a little bit, bring this down, and then put the belt over. Double-check it, make sure it's sitting inside all the grooves on all the pulleys. This feels good. Get this out of there. Awesome. Go ahead and get our serpentine belt on here. To do that, I'm gonna take the belt, and I'm gonna put it right around the crank just like this. I'm coming down along the passenger side of the water pump right here.

At this point, I'm gonna take one side and I'm gonna go over the tensioner, and I'm just going to leave it there for a second. Then I'll bring this other side down underneath the power steering pump right here, and then up and over the alternator. You can see that it's nice and loose, that's because it needs to come underneath the idler. Before we do that, we're gonna come right here, and we're gonna make sure that our tensioner is in the open position. Bring this down, grab this, put it right under. Perfect. Let's get our air intake back on here. It's gonna go right underneath this hose here, line it up there. Grab this, slide it in, push it all the way in so it's up against the whole throttle body. Make sure your clamps are nice and tight. Your hose over here should have a little clippy-do. Ours is actually broken, but it's gonna push in right there and that'll hold it secure. Put this cover back on here, just slide it all the way back so it's sitting inside the pitons. Put this down, and tighten up your bolt. Real quick before we go too much further, let's go ahead and check that petcock, make sure it's nice and tight.

Now, it's gonna be time to fill your cooling system. When you fill the cooling system, it's important to use the proper coolant. You'd want to use Dex-Cool. Dex-Cool is going to be kind of like a reddish, pinkish fluid. If you don't have access to Dex-Cool, you could also use a universal fluid, but you definitely don't want to use green. I'm gonna use universal, that's what I have access to. I'm just gonna fill this right up and then we'll run it for a little while here. You wanna look for the full cold while the engine's cold. Once it heats up, of course, the coolant level is gonna come up a little bit. But to start, we want it to be at full cold, we're gonna run it for a little while, and then we're gonna double-check just to make sure it's full. All right, so now that we've run it for a little while, everything's nice and hot, I'm just going to put this cap on and then we're gonna take it for a road test.

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In this video, we're going to be working with our 2002 Chevy Suburban. We're going to show you how to remove and replace the thermostat on your 5.3L V8.

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Here are the items you'll need for this repair: drain pan, jack, jack stands, coolant, flat blade screwdriver, 15mm wrench, 15mm socket, ratchet, socket extension, torque wrench

Remove the coolant cap before draining your coolant or lowering the level, as with the cap off air can flow through and let the coolant drain faster.

Raise and support your vehicle. We're using a lift to make it easier to show you guys what's going on at home, but this job can easily be done in the driveway or your garage with a jack and jack stands. Place a drain bucket under the front driver side of your radiator. There's actually a little drain hose tucked up here nice and neat. We're going to flip that down and hold it over our drain bucket while we loosen the petcock, and allow the radiator to drain.

Loosen the hose clamp just after the mass air flow sensor. This is going to be the second one back from your air box. We'll do this using a flat blade screwdriver. Wiggle and twist the boot to release it from the mass air flow sensor. You may need to use your screwdriver to help peel it back here. These tend to get stuck on pretty good. We'll also remove the one at the throttle body. We'll need to disconnect the hoses from their clamps here. You can either try prying it out there, or there's also a little clamp at the bottom here that you should be able to compress, pop loose with a flat blade, and remove the intake runner from the vehicle.

Now, it's not 100% necessary to remove the upper fan shroud when doing this. You can get in there and do it without. However, it's going to make it a lot easier on us, and it only takes a moment. Plus, it will make it easier to show you guys what's going on. Should you remove it, we'll pop this hose clamp out with a flat-blade screwdriver. Remove the hose. Remove the two 10mm screws at the top of the fan shroud with a 10mm socket and ratchet. We're going to use our trim tool from 1A Auto to pop these up. You can also do it with a flat-blade screwdriver or a pair of side cutters. You don't have to remove the center pin fully. Just pop it up, and wiggle the rest of the pin out. There's one at the back on each side, like you saw there. Then, another one here up by the radiator. That one also has a twin on the opposite side. Pull back and lift out the upper radiator shroud.

Before removing your serpentine belt, make sure your vehicle has a belt path diagram under the hood somewhere. If this is missing or faded, you can just draw another one onto the plastic with something like a paint marker. Using a 15mm wrench on the tensioner, rotate the nut clockwise to slack the belt. Pop the belt off of whatever pulley is easiest for you to reach. Let the tension off the pulley and remove your serpentine belt.

Using a pair of pliers, and we do have a drain bucket set up underneath our vehicle here, release the clamp on the lower radiator hose at the thermostat housing and move it back. I like to wiggle the hoses, twist them, to try and get them to release. We'll just tuck that hose up and out of the way. Remove the two 10mm bolts on the thermostat housing. Do this with the 10mm socket and ratchet. We're just going to allow that to hang and drain out in a more controlled fashion. Remove the thermostat and housing from the vehicle.

Here we have our old thermostat that we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, these parts are exactly the same. We have the same two bolt mounting location. It comes with a nice new O-ring. The thermostat is actually a part of the housing assembly here. The tops look exactly the same and have the same fitting for the bottom radiator hose. Now, the thermostat can fail and be an item that you replace on its own. Also, any time you lower the cooling level in the vehicle, because you're making a repair, we recommend that you replace these. Their inexpensive, easy to change, and it's cheap insurance. If you've overheated your vehicle to replace this while replacing the root cause of the problem, because a wax pellet in here is actually what allows it to expand and compress during temperature changes. If that pellet melts, your thermostat doesn't function and your vehicle's going to overheat again. If you're in there, it's likely this has failed. Their inexpensive, easy to change, and it will make sure that you can do the repair right the first time. This new part from 1A Auto will go in direct fit, just like our original equipment and fix you up right.

Install your new thermostat and housing assembly along with the two 10mm bolts. Torque these bolts to 11 foot-pounds. Reinstall the lower radiator hose and slide the clamp back into place.

Install the belt over the front grooves of the harmonic balancer or crank pulley. Bringing the right side over top of the pulley. We'll then go over top of the water pump and loop under the power steering pump, over the alternator, under the idler pulley. I'll keep this piece in my hand. Make sure that everything is seated because this one's kind of tight and you're going to want the room. Using my 15mm wrench, we'll take the tension off of the tensioner pulley, slide the belt over, double-check that our path is right, all of the belt is properly seated, and then let the tension back on.

Lift up on the upper radiator hose and reinstall the upper fan shroud. There are two little pins, one on each side, that'll help you align everything. Then, we'll reinstall our four plastic clips by popping the base in, and then locking the center pin down. Reinstall the two 10mm screws at the top. Tighten them down with a 10mm socket and ratchet. Reinstall the hoses back into their clips.

Reinstall the intake tubing. It's easiest to set it onto the throttle body. Reengage the hoses into their clips. Then, get the boot over the air box. Then, tighten down both clamps with a flat-blade screwdriver.

Refill your coolant. This vehicle uses the orange coolant Dex-Cool. Make sure that it is either pre-diluted or if you buy concentrated full strength that you mix it 50/50 with distilled water. We'll fill it up as much as it'll take, and then back our vehicle outside to finish bleeding the system while it's running. Don't be afraid to overfill it, because once our vehicle runs and gets up to temperature the thermostat will open and that fluid will all go into the engine block.

Set your vehicle with the fan on the lowest speed, set to hot in the vents so you can feel the warm air coming out of the vehicle. This will also open any bypass valves that prevent coolant from entering the heater core when shut off. This is another place that air pockets can build up. Now we'll let our vehicle run up to temp, and keep the coolant topped off in the process.

Now we just had to add just about a gallon of coolant to the vehicle once it got up to temp. Now we'll keep an eye on it, wait for it to finish bubbling, our heat to get hot, and the level to stabilize before we'll finally top off our fluid and take our vehicle for a test drive. Once your fluid is finished bleeding, and it's topped off reinstall your cap and test drive your vehicle.

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Remove this cover, I'm gonna use an 8-millimeter socket. Loosen that bolt up and slide the cover out. And loosen up this worm clamp, you can use an 8-millimeter socket or a straight blade screwdriver. And the same with this one right here. Use a trim tool and just separate this retainer right there with that bracket. Now slide the snorkel off there and pull it out. Just to gain more access, I'm gonna pull this airbox off. Disconnect the mass air flow sensor. Grab the airbox, pull it straight up, then you can slide it out. There's two tabs, and this holds it in. I'm just gonna take the cap off the coolant reservoir, set it aside.

I'm gonna take the bottom radiator hose off. I need to drain the coolant, there's no coolant drain on this radiator. So I'm gonna use a hose clamp pliers that have the cable style. Remove that hose clamp. Make sure you have a drain bucket underneath. Squeeze that. And just let that drain out. Now I'm gonna take this hose off, just use some hose clamp pliers. And let's twist the hose a little bit. If you can't get it to break free just use a 90-degree pick, try to get underneath there, or a hose pick. Slide the hose off. There might be a little coolant in there.

Now there's two bolts, one here and one underneath the housing. Use a 10-millimeter socket, take those bolts out. So take both of those bolts out, should be able to slide it off. Keep the drain bucket underneath because it'll probably spill some more coolant out, and get it out. Just take a rag, just clean this area up. If you have a lot of corrosion on here just use a razor blade or a scraper, scrape some of that off, or even a wire brush. Now take the thermostat and housing, slide it in position. And take the two bolts, get them started. And torque these bolts to 11-foot-pounds.

Now take the hose, line the hose up with the clamp, use the hose clamp tool. And if these clamps seem weak, then replace them with a worm clamp. And slide the airbox back in position. What you want to do is slide this piece, that's gonna go right here. It's gonna slide there and then push the two pushpins straight down. Push down, it's good to go. Reconnect the mass air flow sensor. And put the snorkel back on. Line this up with the throttle and the airbox. And tighten up the worm clamps. And line this bracket back up. Put the cover on, slide it in the back, get the bolt started, snug it down.

Now you want to fill up the coolant reservoir. I fill it up about an inch or two above where the fill line is before we start the vehicle and start the vehicle with the cap off. And the level is gonna adjust, it's probably gonna suck some into the engine and then after that you're gonna adjust accordingly. Let the vehicle run for about 10 minutes, monitoring the level. While you're letting it run, monitor the temperature gauge, make sure it does not go over 210 degrees. If it does then shut the vehicle off. Let it cool down, top off the coolant and try it again.

Turn the heat on, put it on medium fan. Turn the heat all the way up to hot. Make sure you do feel some heat coming out of the vents, especially when the temperature starts getting up there. If you don't feel any heat, again your coolant level is gonna be too low, shut the vehicle off, top off the coolant. And then after that, after the thermostat has opened up when the hoses are nice and hot, shut the vehicle down, adjust accordingly, put the cap back on and you should be good to go.