For those that have been watching, asking questions and helping me to figure out how to keep this monster in my Crestliner cool: I finally made some changes and took a 2.5 hour trip to the Jackson, TN Bunny Run last weekend. Just wanted to let you know how it went and see if you think everything is acting 'normal'. 1:I took the Spal electric fan from in front of the radiator and moved it to the back. Had to take off the mechanical fan to do so. 2: I took off the A/C condenser. 3: I added Water Wetter. I'm down to nothing but a 2" thick, 3-row radiator- 19"x19". So, we headed out about 4:30am. Outside temp was mid-50's. All the way to Jackson, the gauge never got over 190. We stopped once and let it idle with the fan running. It sat there and the temp slowly increased to 210. Once I got back on the road, the temp came down just fine. Once we got into town and were driving around, I turned the fan on and the temp dropped to about 180. I'm thinkin YaHoo- it works!!! On the way home, outside temp was about 65 and the water temp was hanging around 200. On one long hill pull, it got to 210, but then came back down as we leveled out. Ok, so it seemed to act as I think it should and with temps I can live with...or more importantly, the MOTOR can live with. Someone had asked if, on a long drive, the temp just kept climbing and the answer is no...but the outside temp does seem to have a marked effect on it. So... this is 'bare bonz'... what would it do on a 95 degree day with the A/C running? I don't know...but I'm still thinking a 3-row 19x19 doesn't have enough water in it to keep the temp under 200 on those hot days. Any thoughts?
radiator might be too small...not so much water capacity, but it needs more surface area to allow more heat transfer. I'd rather have a mechanical fan...but the way things are set up in the car kind of determines how big it can be, etc. If you can't fit a big mechanical fan in, but you can fit a big electric fan in, then electric would be the way to go. this is not very common though. You're gonna have trouble when it gets over 90 out
HOW big is this big block were talking bout'(i mean my 396 is almost a damn small block by todays standards) squirrel is right though rad. seems abit small unless its a small one like me
I put a sbc in an import truck and tried adding rows to the stock radiator. Didn't work! Tried a mustang radiator! Didn't work. I took the truck to a radiator shop and told them to build a radiator to cool the truck. They built a copper/br*** radiator that never overheated. In fact, the truck ran so cool, I had to partially block of part of the radiator, in cold weather, to get the heater to work.
Well.....from what I'm hearing....thats a little warm for my liking. Either the radiator is too small, got a 190 thermo in there, the pump is not pumping well enough, restricted airflow or restricted waterflo....take your pick or a little of all three. Also....your timing will make your engine get a little warm too. Whatever temp. thermo you got in there.....your engine should run around 15 degree of what it is unless your blown or really big inches. Just built a 540 Cu.In. SB........it runs about 185 with a electric waterpump and 1 cooling fan............ If its a new engine....go with a bigger radiator, if its a rebuild, get it good and hot....carefully open the radiator cap, look in there and make sure you got good flow. If not, flush it out. If you have what looks like foam or bubbles in your coolant.....you could have a head gasket seeping............. Try the cheap things first.......
If you took the fan off of the front of the radiator and mounted it on the rear, it will be blowing the wrong way. If it was originally set up as a pusher, it pushed cool air from the front to the rear. It is still pushing, only now, it is pushing hot air from the engine compartment through the back of the radiator towards the front of the car. Not good
Yea, hopefully the guy knows about the right airflow and reversing the polarity, or changing the blade......we can't teach everybody everything at this split second.........
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