I do believe that ol' 1343 is
> overheating. It ran 210 all the way to and from the show on the freeway.
> Air temp around 80.
> As soon as I got off the freeway it ran up to around 230-240. The engine
is
> rebuilt but stock.
newly rebuilt engines tend to run hotter than normal for the first thousand
or so miles due to the newness of everything and the tighter clearances. it
can take a couple of thousand miles to burnish or break in all the parts.
one place to check for problems is the distributor. make sure all the
advance weights are free and the vac advance is working properly. running
with \the timing improperly set will cause the car to run extra hot. you
should also check the gauge for accuracy, the one on my motorhome reads 230
when the temp is only 210.
> - Moved the bottom of the a/c core 1 in out from the radiator
I don't think this was a good mod. Air always finds the easiest way to lower
pressure, by moving the ac coil out it allows the air to spill across the
rad instead of through it. the rad does not cool with air going through the
fins.
> - Put on a 6 blade high flow flex fan
> - Installed a 160 degree thermostat
>
> I'm wondering if my water pump is up to par as the upper hose seems a lot
> hotter than the lower hose. It wasn't replaced during the engine rebuild.
If your water pump was the problem it would run hotter at higher rpm. pumps
tend to cavitate ( swirl and agitate the water and not move the water) at
higher rpm. the top hose should be hotter as the hot water exits the engine
through the top hose and the 'cooler' water enters the engine through the
bottom.
>
> Another possibility is the tranny overheating but how do I check this? I
have
> an external trans cooler but never installed it. Would this help?
any heat load you remove from the rad will help, just make sure you don't
put the cooler in the rad's air flow and pre heat the air with cooler or you
just wasted your time and money. there are new coolers out there on the
market that attach to the frame and use the frame as a heat sink to cool the
fluid. OEM's have been using this technology for years for cooling power
steering fluid.
cooling is all about air and fluid flow, there must be sufficient volume but
not too much speed, if there is too much speed the transfer of heat does not
happen. if you move the water too fast through the block with a high flow
pump( if you push more of something through the same opening it has to go
faster), it will not soak as much heat from the iron, if you make it flow
through the rad too fast, the air will not have a chance to remove the heat
from the water. This is real balancing act too little is too little and too
much is too much, sort of like Goldilocks and the three bears, you have find
the right balance.
Ford spent lots of time figuring out how much water to pump through the
block to cool it, under normal conditions it should be sufficient, I believe
the main problem with the brick is air flow through the rad, you cut a big
section out of the middle of front bumper ( cheapest way) or figure a new
way to get more air through the rad. electric pusher fans are my choice, but
as word of warning.... cheap fans are cheap fans! good fans move more air
and are more efficient.
good stuff ain't usually cheap and cheap stuff ain't usually good.
enough of a rant for now......
/// unsubscribe/change address requests to majordomo@autox.team.net or try
/// http://www.team.net/mailman/listinfo
/// Archives at http://www.team.net/archive/bricklin
|