Offroad-Express

Unsure weather to remove it or not. My water pump leaks a little bit of water which is making my truck want to over heat and i cbf replacing water pump atm. Will it b sweet if i pull thermostat out? Have just flushed radiator and cleaned all the mud out of the fins to. Will doing this damage my engine?

don't run without a thermostat.
it can cause it to run cold for a very long time and also, rather strangely, can cause it to overheat. thats because the thermostat also opens and closes the bypass port. so with no thermostat a fair bit of water simply bypasses the radiator and doesn't get cooled.

considering the weather at the moment you will differently need the thermostat there to keep the engine up to temp.
might be a good time to replace the thermostat.

if its overheating due to lack of water you will just crack the head thermostat or no thermostat.
you only have to loose a litre or two for the water level to drop below head level and the head runs dry.

Is the water pump on the 2l-t from the 87 surf run on the cambelt or the fan belt?

afaik all the L series run it off fan belt.

Estimate how long itl take to replace. Radiator is already out. Meant to b going up thompsons tomoro. Im feeling itl b a long night lol.

if you already have the radiator out then its just a matter of pulling off the bottom pulley, front cover off, swap pump over, reassemble.

hard part is the pulley. as you need big bar for the big bolt (or rattle gun) and a puller which threads into the pulley. do not use a claw type puller as you will damage the harmonic balancer.
bit of loctite on the big bolt and rattle gun it back on.

Have got all thos tools apart from a pully puller Anyone in the tauranga area have one....?

you can make one. steel plate a 12mm threaded rod

large hole in the middle for the threaded rod and two smaller ones the same distance apart as the threaded holes on the harmonic balancer....

Fuel economy will get worse without a thermostat as the motor won't be operating at the ideal temp

Alsorted now. Managed to get it done firday night with out removing crank pully and cambelt cover. Runs realy good now. Went up thompsons track on saturday held temp really good.

nice going