I will to post pictures so you can better understand what I'm talking about, but I will explain it in case I can't. So recently the thermostat on my 98 Ram stuck open, no heat, so when I took the housing off took the thermostat out I noticed it has these little brass fingers that stick out and are holding the thermostat open, taking some needle nose pliers and pinching those fingers outward toward the housing released the disc and the thermostat closed. My question is what the heck are these fingers for, why would you want a thermostat that appears to be doomed to stick open at some point? The odd thing is my wife's Astro van did the same thing the same week. Both stats are the same brand, the interesting thing is both new stats for my Ram and the Astro are the same brand that stuck open but neither of them have these little brass fingers but they are the same part number. This leaves me scratching my head and wondering what the heck!? Anyone ever see these before, is there something I'm missing here? Yellow arrows point to the "fingers"

My suspicion is those two little tabs are suppose to limit how far the stat will open. Once the spring has pulled the valve past the tabs, they are working the wrong way.

The reason? The little kids that are making them messed something up, or the tab material wasn't made from the correct metrology and was maybe too soft, maybe both.

The reality: That is on par with the current industry standard.

What brand stats are those? I want to be sure I don't have those "quality thermostats" in my stuff. Thanks. Gene

They are packaged as MURRAY TEMPERATURE CONTROL, but they are stamped on the part as MOTORAD.
The way this is put together it almost seems as though it was intentionally engineered to fail. Interesting that the current available part, in both vehicles, is missing this additional part.

those are fail safe type t-stats. when eng tries/starts to overheat, the tabs are extended in order to keep the eng from sever overheating.

You are correct. https://motorad.com/tech-tips/fail-safe-thermostats/

So in reading their explanation of that design I can understand their intended goal, but my vehicles werent overheating, never have, if anything I've struggled to get good heat into the equation, even with all new cooling system components, I've even posted about that a couple years back.
Anyway, thanks for the explanation guys!