Fuck GM forever
For the placement of the thermostat in the 3.4L V6 engines they were using in the 90s and 00′s. It’s roughly in the green circle here. Under basically everything.
I ended up pulling the throttle body, realizing I didn’t have to do so, broke the bolt putting it back, badly botched drilling out the bolt, and I now have a salvage yard upper intake manifold on my car because I wrecked the throttle body bolt threads on the original. What should have been a quick, like 15 or so minute, job costing less than $10... I’m several hours in, spread over a few days, and up to probably $70 or so. If the thermostat, a part that is *going* to fail eventually, was in a better spot for replacement, like on most cars, I’d have been fine. At least the additional work wasn’t too difficult.