possible thermostat problem

Hey fellas, I have a 92 mts 3000gt non-turbo and I have noticed that it takes quite a while to warm up and when it is first started sometimes in extreme temps it will die on me after backing out of where ever I am parked along with the a/c killing the engine when its not warmed up so being that I gained my mechanical education working on my 81 z/28 the first thing I am thinking is thermostat is probably stuck open causeing the enging to take longer to warm up and robbing power early on but with all the sensors and computer crap in cars now I am not as confident in diagnosing this so I thought I would see what the automotively wiser men and women could tell me here. Thanks

What is your rpm at idle? Cold idle? Hot idle? Rpm should also bump up when you turn your a/c on.

The water pump might not be flowing right. It might indeed need a thermostat. The temp sensor could be messed up and turning the fan on early wich would cause it to take longer to warm up. If it dies like you said, it could just need a tune-up. The amount of miles it has on it would help guess the problems it may have. Does the check engine light come on?

also> You may have just typed the longest run on sentance in the history of mankind. I would check and see because you might be able to get into the guiness record books with it.(jk) No offence i do that too somtimes, but you might want to switch to decaf. (again, JK).

Ah crap! Busted by the grammer police. I'll try and do better this time. :) Anyway to answer questions the mileage is sky high, it has 120 rounded off. It could deffinately use some new rings but since I am in the middle of a rebuild for my camaro I don't have the money for that just yet. As far as the rpm's go, they stay between 500 to 1000 at idle. I'm not sure of the variance between hot and cold right off hand but I don't believe there is to big of gap between them. Also I believe the problem with the a/c is in fact the rpm's not adjusting for the added workload. When I turn the a/c on I can feel a noticeable lag in power and of coarse the reverse happens when I turn it off. There is change in rpm at idle with a/c on except it gets lower and until the engine is completely warmed up it will sometimes try to die on me. Thanks for the reply guys.

Oh and after that last post I should probably add that other than the stated problems the car runs fantastic especially with so many miles on it.

A stuck up t-stat wouldn't cause the dieing problems you mentioned, but a long warm up (ie, the temp gauge takes a long time to get to the 1/2 mark, or never gets there) could definitely be a bad t-stat.

Bad flow from a waterpump causes overheating.