Broken on the side of the road: coolant leak at the otterstat.

[About time]

It’s a temperature switch mounted on the bottom of a coolant pipe on the driver’s side of the engine bay. It turns on the cooling fans when the coolant gets hot enough. It’s also prone to leaking or falling out and dumping all your coolant on the ground. Honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for mine to fail. People turn the pipe over to reduce the chance of that. With an EFI conversion, you can use the coolant temp sensor and the ECU to control the fans instead. You could probably rig up something like that without EFI, too, if you know some electronics and can build a circuit to read the sensor.

I have no idea why it’s called an otterstat. http://store.delorean.com/p-6348-coo...otterstat.aspx

— Joe

So do you just carry a spare in the glove box and simply plug it in when one goes bad? Thanks in advance

[jangell]

Not necessarily a bad idea, but this is the first time mine has failed on me in the 15 years that I’ve had the car. Luckily I won’t have to worry about it again.

— Joe

[TheStoffel]

My otterstat failed on day 3 of ownership. It's a rite of passage.