Got a mild 350 Chevy, can’t get it to warm up. Drive or idle, never hits more then 140, and the hoses never get hot. Fresh build, need to burp somehow? Gauge is checked. Thanks
Cold weather and no thermostat? Try blocking off some of the air flow to the radiator with some card board and see what happens.
It would be getting hot if it needed to burp trapped air, your thermostat is either stuck open or non existent
Quite frankly, your situation, "my engine is running cold" is for a lot of hot-rodders, something they desperately try to achieve.
My self just encountered this OT 4,3 Thermostat had just enough of crack (About .030 thoe) not to close completely ,bypassing water,
For a second method of checking, I use a thermal infared temp gun. You can shoot the area behind the thermostat or close on a head and if the gauge is way off for any reason, you have some info to verify if the engine is cool or not.
I'm going to assume that you are trying to get decent heat out of the heater. I'm with one trick Pony in that the first trial and error thing is to block off the grill/radiator with piece of cardboard. If part of the cooling system is higher than the radiator fill you can indeed have an airlock in the system. My OT daily has and air bleed on the thermostat housing that I have to unscrew and make sure that the coolant level is proper there. Quite often if the coolant level isn't right you don't get any warm air out of the heater. Not just not hot but not even warm. On the other hand the old stock heater in my 48 cooled the engine enough that most of the time the thermost barely opened. If you drilled a hole in the thermost body shell as an air bleed too big of a hole will let more coolant than you want to get past and not get the engine up to temp. That is again, pesonal experience. You may have to back flush the heater core if it is an older heater core. I've had to do a lot of them over the years on customer cars and on a few of my own. They get clogged up and coolant just won't flow through them effectively. Still a heat gun really helps figure things out as WFO guy said, That is probably the quick way to see what is happening outside of putting your hand on the upper hose to see if it feels warm when the engine is supposed to be colder than the thermostat rating and put it on the radiator to see if it is getting warm water to it when it really shouldn't. If it is a system with the heater hose that returns to the radiator that won't help the temp rise real fast in some cases but you usually get heat out of the heater.
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