I opened up my airbox the other day to check the thermostat - I want to reconnect my hot air hose for faster heat up during the winter. It's a good thing I checked because the flapper was frozen at full-hot. I used a hair drier to heat up the thermostat and it didn't move at all.

Well, not having a spare thermostat handy, I gutted the works and put my air box back in, after sealing up the hot air hole. I decided to cover the hot side because I also found water and filth in my air box that is likely from running with no belly pan and an uncovered hot air hole.

I do NOT want to reinstall the flawed thermostat system just to check it every few years to make sure it is still working, so here's my idea:

Instead of putting a thermostatically controlled flapper back in the air box, I could use a small electric motor (and a couple gears perhaps) to move the flapper from hot to cold. Forward moves it to hot, reverse moves it to cold. Inside the car (maybe installed on one of the empty accessory gauge squares) I could have something like this:



A return-to-center toggle swtich that when moved to either side would energize the motor in one direction. When the flapper reached full-hot or full-cold, it would make contact with another circuit that lights up one of the two LEDs in the car. That way you know where the flapper is, and you can adjust anywhere between the two extremes.

Granted, this method would mean more work, but all summer long the flapper is left to full-cold. Then, in the winter, you can put it on full-hot until the car warms up, then move it back to cold. The best of both worlds, no more thermostat failure.

Thoughts?
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'93 244: 'A' cam 4 deg. advanced, 25/22 sways, custom heim endlinks, poly bushings, and a lot more styling customization than I care to recount.