A little bit of background. 71 C20 stock - 307 - 3 speed column
This is a photo of my truck before I left the job site towards home. A mixed load of carpet / tile / wood / etc.
https://imgur.com/a/pwYMp
My truck has a new 195 thermostat in it. I do not think a lower temp thermostat would help in this situation, I actually think it would make things worse. When I am driving down the highway at 50-55 MPH the truck will stay at 195 +/-5 degrees all day long. I typically leave work around 2 PM and am able to avoid most SoCal traffic but with Thanksgiving coming up, today it was unavoidable. I was in a situation where I had a decent size load in the back, it's about 95 degrees outside, I am in bumper to bumper traffic for 10+ minutes going up an on-ramp. I slowly watched my temperature gauge from about 195 to about 230-235 before I was able to get moving again. Within a few minutes of back at highway speed it was able to get back down to ~195.
The reason I do not believe a lower temp thermostat would help here is because I feel as though most people don't understand how a thermostat works. A thermostat's job is to regulate temperature - period. When your engine is getting hot like mine was (30 degrees over thermostat rating) this means your thermostat is wide open. This would be good and cooling the engine but a wide open thermostat is not giving the coolant enough time in the radiator to cool down - combined with the fact that you are not moving (not getting cool air through the radiator) causes a never ending stream of water that just keeps increasing in temperature. If I had a 180 thermostat it also would have gotten stuck fully open, just at a much sooner rate, which is why I believe it would actually be worse in that situation.
My question is, how bad is it for the engine to occasionally hit temperatures that high? What could be causing this?
Any input / feedback is much appreciated.