Because the factory part seems to be particularly failure prone, and because Honda dealers want $33 or more for a new on, I'm looking for an aftermarket alternative to the OEM replacement thermostat on my Honda VFR. I know, this is a car site, but this is also the best car repair & mod site that I know of and this sort of thing should be right up the GRM Forum's street.
What some 5th & 6th gen VFR owners have done is get the Stant replacement for Honda cars that has been installed seemingly forever, Stant p/n 13878 which gets installed in things like 1989 Accords to 2002 Civics to all sorts of things in-between and beyond. The problem is, it has to be ground down "about 1/4th of an inch" around the circumference of the thermostat, otherwise it doesn't fit into the VFR's stock location. What I'd like to find is a better fitting t-stat. My problem is, I don't know how to go about it without removing my existing t-stat and going through every single boxed thermostat on the shelf of whatever auto parts store will let me.
The diameter of the VFR's thermostat has been measured at 1.730 inches, with a total overall height of 2.251 inches. Is there a guide somewhere that I could use to look this up?
The common failure mode with these things seems to be sticking wide open 100% of the time, and it seems to be a common issue starting around 16k miles no matter how old the bike is. I'd like to get past that by using a quality aftermarket item that I don't have to grind on before installation. Any information on how to find this part on my own or if someone has one in mind that should drop in, please let me know.
