Thank you, Dr. Ohmess, and your intimant coolant hose technique gave me a chuckle! I got the car back this morning after 3 hours at the shop. New thermo installed, along with proper rubber hoses and a new distributor rotor and cap - I'd swear there is ten more horsepower after the distributor component swap (is that possible?).
Anyway, with the proper spec thermostat that was drilled at the top, I now see only 3 pm to 3:15 on the coolant temp guage at 75 degrees outside, which is better than before but not where I was at pre-radiator swap. The actual temp at the water pump from the infra red reader was 170 degrees, plus or minus, which is good, right?
@ Don, for everyone's benefit here and to bring this saga to a happy ending, I think the only remaining culprit is my Ireland Engineering temp sending unit. I think I need to junk that for a proper sending unit (wish I had kept my previous one in there!). Question is, this is a single prong coolant temp configuration. Is an OEM spec 3.0L or 3.4L temp sending unit the issue here? And do I need to convert the single prong temp sending unit receiver to a multi unit prong I see in the later cars?
Wayne