I agree, junk fan. After you add a proper steel fan, try one of those simple ring fan shrouds. Something that lets the fan grab the air through the radiator. You might not need/want the big full coverage kind.
"I bought it from a friend of mine in LA who put about 500 miles on it" Beautiful car but I can't help but wonder if this issue is why it was sold after only 500 miles
Relocate that alternator. Your lucky to have 20 degrees of the water pump pulley being in contact with belt maybe less. It could be slipping and you wouldn’t know it. You need 90*. Believe in smaller water pump pulleys also. We turn our engines a lot slower today than in the past; that solved my problem with another engine. Even with that fan you should feel a lot of air flow with a shroud. I too like steel fixed pitch fans.. good luck.
Ive always heard, and kinda agree that if you cant cool a sbc with a stock old ford radiator, you have other problems.
Hi Chris, can you email me re the Cadillac valve covers. andrewrussellceg@gmail.com I can't find a way to reply to your add. Cheers Andrew
My first thought too when I saw those pics was the very short engagement of the fan belt with the water pump/fan pulley; as well as that flex fan, never been a fan of them, and a large percentage of the "too hot" threads we see here involve one of those damn flex fans. Some guys love 'em, not me. I bet relocation of the alternator to engage more of the fan belt into a larger percentage of the pulley, and a change of fans would have a huge impact on the cooling. Not sure if there is a smaller diamter pulley available, but increased coolant flow would also help. If still more cooling is needed then I'd try one of those universal shrouds. Proper timing, good tuning, and that should do it.
Bingo, also Jegs (among others) sells a hi output SBC long water pump. Reasonable priced. If available, install a Champion 3 row radiator. Put the 160’ back in, get rid of any flex fans and corrugated radiator hoses. One Syclone pusher fan should be plenty. Good luck
As stated earlier, I had the same issue with a high mount alternator (minimal belt wrap on water pump) on a SBC. That being said, I ran a flex fan on a 70 Nova with factory replacement rad and factory shroud using spacers to correctly locate the flex fan and never had an issue with running hot (although I did also have a 69 Camaro style cowl scoop that allowed hot air to escape). I personally wouldn't hesitate to run a flex fan again.
I apologize in advance for the following dissertation, but...... .....do a google search for Newton's law of cooling. The water moving too fast to cool is a myth. If you had a sealed rad (no flow) full of hot coolant, and subjected that rad to airflow, yes, the longer you left the coolant in the rad, the more it would cool. However, if you were to plot that cooling over time, you would find that the RATE at which the cooling takes place is an exponential curve that decreases with the temperature difference between the hot coolant and the air. Put another way - when the temperature difference (delta-T) between the hot coolant and the airflow is large, heat transfer (cooling) initially takes place very, very quickly (almost instantaneously). But as that happens, and the coolant cools, the delta-T becomes less, and the RATE at which further cooling happens gets less and less until the point where the coolant and air are almost the same temperature and continued cooling takes a very long time. This is Newton's law of cooling. The inverse of the above also applies, regarding the coolant picking up the heat from within the engine. The more coolant that you can move through the engine the greater BTU load you can haul per minute. A good example of Newton's law can be seen when quenching a red-hot piece of steel in a bucket of water. At first, the temperature difference (delta-T) between the red-hot steel and the water is huge - therefore the initial heat transfer occurs at a great rate - the steel initially cools very fast - almost instantaneously. However, after this initial cooling, the delta-T is much smaller, so the remaining cooling occurs much more slowly. If you removed the steel after a second or two - it has cooled a lot - but it will still be warm. To continue cooling the steel to the temp. of the water, you have to leave it in there quite a bit longer - because as it cools - the rate of cooling continually decreases as well. In short - initial cooling is fast, but subsequent cooling occurs more and more slowly until cooling that last little bit takes a long time. So what does this mean? Basically it means, the longer the coolant stays in the rad, the less efficient the cooling that takes place is - to the point that the rate of cooling is so slow as to be detrimental to overall system cooling. Better to dump the big load of heat right away and go back quickly for another load than hang about waiting for a last little bit of insignificant cooling to happen. ...except for the fact that his issue is heat building at idle speeds.....
This is the setup on the 40 Tudor I built. Very similar to yours. High mount alt, no shroud. This was a 350, not a 283. The only difference is the fan, I used solid steel, 17" I believe, with no shroud. The radiator was an original one, not even sure if had ever been re-cored. I put 2" spacers under the radiator so the fan would be more centered in the core. It was a standard so there was no hood interference. I've heard a Deluxe can have hood interference if the radiator is raised. It ran at 180 all the time, might climb to 200 in traffic in 95 degree weather, and I got stuck in some hot Texas traffic a few times. I know it got hot under the hood, I had a problem with vapor lock on that Edelbrock carb until I put an insulated spacer on it, but the coolant stayed 180-200. Before making major changes, put a solid steel fan on it and see if the radiator can be raised a bit.
I'm late to the party but if the timing is late it will cause the engine to overheat. I'd agree that the alternator position is most likely letting the belt slip on the water pump pully because of lack of contact area. Years ago I had pretty well that setup on my 48 when I used a smog pump bracket as an Alternator bracket and had about the same amount of contact area between the belt and pulley. You don't have the holes in the head to mount the alternator down in front of the right head when running a long pump though.
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