Haha, the Tstat actually is probably around 30-40k old, but the coolant has been dumped/changed for various reasons during that time period like 3-4 times. Always used demineralized water was well. I'm going to call the stealership and see if they have a burst disc and get that swapped out this weekend and see what happens.
Guess I learned my lesson that I'll just have to suck it up with the a/c basically being useless the first few miles when the ambient temp gets up around 100 here lol.