Yet another flathead overheating problem

petejoe beat me to it. Check that 60 year old vacuum advance on the dist.

 

Been told many years ago that those engines
circulate the water Too Fast, so thermostats... Old wives tale.

New carb... hmmm. Check plugs for lean condition. See Petejoe post. Covers it all.

The vinegar will clean it out, but be prepared it will clean the rad too. Any pinholes will appear. Which would require you to recore it. May need it anyway. Just a helpful warning. :]'

Get a infrared heat gun and check things out. When warm you can sometimes tell if there is blockage in the radiator with it. You'll have cool spots in the rad.

Overheating at high speeds and underload at high rpms.... vac advance... see previous post.



edit***

"I know this topic has been exhausted but after reading many threads and trying a bunch of things I am stuck. 50 8BA kind of unknown motor good looking water pumps and 160 thermostats. I have been running the car for a few years no problems but this past week the car got very hot coming up the hill. I figured the mismatched temp gauges might be at fault so I replaced them with two SW gauges are saying the same temps. At an idle its running 220 and if you try to drive it, it creeps on 250. The left bank is running about 10 hotter then the right. I have checked both water pumps which appear to be new, the inside of the engine has no rust build up what so ever, tried 160 and no thermostat, and have played with timing as well as the carburetor quite a bit. The Radiator is recored and there is no water in the oil or bubbles in the radiator. All this has had no effect. Any thoughts? "

After re-reading this and if all is spot on... it has to be timing or a lean condition (lean condition - maybe why one bank it 10 degrees hotter.)

Best of luck.

 

The distributor has new diaphram and is hooked up to the load o matic 94 carb correctly and im reading 6 to 22 total so I think that is functioning correctly. Right now I am considering replacing the distributor with a after market unit to see what that may change. I really appreciate all the information I am receiving here its quite detailed.

 

If your stock distributor is working correctly then it cant be the problem. Another dizzy will help with better advance during acceleration but will not help with the heating problems. I've been running an original dizzy for 10 years on this flatty with no heat issues as a result.

 

You replaced the gauges but what about the senders? Are they mechanical gauges? Have you used a temp gun to verify temp?

 

went from mechanical gauges to electric SW and both gauges complimented the previous gauges readings.

 

So a small update I ripped the heads off to check out and see if I could see anything going on. With the heads off the block looks good but the head gasket was showing signs of discoloration. I sent the heads down and had them milled. Evidently the one head was warped 16 thousandths of an inch. Hopefully that was what was causing my overheating issues and once I get it back on that will be that.

 

Not much of a warp at .016. (1/64") A good gasket would compensate for that.

 

Back together and running amazingly. I also was able to figure out that something is going on with my brand new stewart warner gauges. They currently both read exactly 100 over what the actual temp is checked by gun and thermometer.

 

The inner part of a hose can collapse, with little or no outward indication; Worth the time to remove and inspect the hoses. The fact that it was ok for a long time, would indicate something "suddenly happening". That can happen with any engine...not just flatties.

4TTRUK

 

do you use straight white vinegar or a dilution with water? Same with the baking soda, how much do you use?

 

check out the gauges by putting the sending units in boiling water, you should get a reading around 212 degrees. I personally have little faith in S W gauges. They are made by Maxima Technologies, their ***embly facility is in Mexico. Have not been able to find out where the electronic parts come from. As I understand it, Maxima bought the name and rights from the original S W company.

 

NOTE: old thread brought up.

Another time, start a new thread. A lot of people are going to respond to the original post rather than answer your question.

Use straight vinegar. I don't know about the baking soda since I did not use any.

Neal