My wife told me yesterday her CEL popped on. There were no apparent issues with the car, and it ran/drove fine. Last night I scanned the car with a Durametric, and code P2181 for cooling system performance came up. I cleared the code multiple times, but it would not erase. After doing some research, it appears this code is related to the ECU reading a temperature either too high, or too low in a specified amount of time (i.e. when the car is warming up).

This morning I asked my wife to pay attention to the temperature gauge. She said it took about 11 minutes to get up to temp (not sure if that's normal or excessive) and the gauge did not start moving until about 8 or 9 minutes after starting the car. It wasn't cold out, perhaps 50 degrees. I'm thinking it's a sticking thermostat, but want to get some advice before I go throwing money at the car. Any opinions on what the issue might be? The car was just serviced at the dealer for 2 recalls (one of which was the camshaft bolts) a couple weeks ago, but other than that there has been no recent work to it.

 

For me, the thermostat was open and not getting up to temp fast enough.. In the summer the car was fine since warm weather but when the air cooled down the car took too long to get thru the start up parameters and the emission code popped. Put in thermostat and fixed. I once read it has to get to a certain temp within 5 minutes of start or the CEL will trip. Getting the temp quickly helps with emissions. If not overheating, then I say open tstat.

 

that is REALLY slow to warm up, I would say it is definitely the thermostat, my cars water is fully up to temp in 5-10 minutes even when its in the low 30's like today.

bad news is the thermostat is in the V under the intake, if you get the the work done you might as well get the thermostat housing updated at the same time (old one pipes are glued in, new one they are bolted)

 

Thanks. Looks like I'll be replacing the thermostat and hopefully it fixes the issue (I'm confident it will). Luckily I do all my own work so the labor is free. $215 for a new thermostat isn't the end of the world.

 

Highly likely based on your info just the thermostat. Fairly easy job. I do my own repairs also.

 

take lots of pictures

and you seriously might want to consider swapping out the thermostat housing while you're in there, it's the one thing on my car that worries me (glued in pipe with no easy way to check)
It's one of those things that if it fails (and they have) it could easily be catastrophic - like dumping all your coolant while hauling on the autobahn