For the first 3500 miles on my 2.4L I have been running a OE Temp 195* Stant thermostat from my local Kragen Auto Parts. Worked fine, however ran a little warm for my tastes (well within spec though).

It was difficult to track down, but I found a vendor on Amazon.com that sells the Motorad 180* and installed it yesterday. In my absentmindedness I installed it backwards, with the element in radiator hose side versus on the housing side. The water pressure pushing against the spring was enough to open it due to the direction of flow so it essentially ran as it would without a thermostat - prolonged warmup times.

Today I popped the water neck off to swap it around, but due to the water pressure opening the thermostat due to physical pressure, the small pintle popped out and is somewhere in my cooling system, hopefully just stuck in my radiator where it will not cause any problems. Now the 180* stat is useless as without that small pintle the thermostat will not open it self under the specified temperature.

Motherfucker. So at 1930 on a Sunday night, I made a run to Kragen and got another Stant 195* OE spec thermostat and installed it. Sigh... so I am back to where I was at before the weekend. :wallbash

I did that once on an Explorer that I once had,
the worst part, I did it in my high school shop class on my own vehicle. lol.
Best of luck that the piece got stuck in the radiator.

Lol good use of money.

I picked up a 180* tstat from advance a while back. Dont remember the part # but they do have one in stock.

Please feel free to make fun all you want, but since my car was apart for so long, I may have done the same thing. Spring side faces the head, right?

Correct.