I have a French Block and I am considering using Baron Heads - High Flow to help with the heat. Anybody ever use them? http://www.baronracingequipment.com/productsBaronHeads-HighFlow.htm
Best tip, get a radiator from Steve Long Custom Radiators on Gasoline Alley in Indy. Mine wont get over 180. That's with 180 stats, stock fan, Speedway Motors pumps. Cleaned the block good when I built the engine.
A lot of great info here. However, I really don't think that there is a cooling problem with flathead engines. If the radiator and the block are clean and they are timed properly they will not overheat. Mine runs all summer with an electric fan that rarely comes on. I think the biggest problem is in not ensuring these things happen so that you don't spend the rest of your life trying to cool them down with all sorts of gimmicks.
thanks guys buy the way i'm running stock 59ab withreal eddie meyer heads evans intake two 94 and a lincoln dizzy for now till i build my other motor. i'm getting ready to run it for the fist time in this car . i also have a redone 32 radatior.
The name of the game is heat transfer. We want to transfer the heat from the engine (specifically the surface of the water jackets) into the water, then transfer it from the water to the radiator, and finally from the radiator to the air. Raising the boiling point of our chosen coolant is not our objective, that is a way to deal with a symptom of a problem. The better answer is to deal with the root cause of the problem. There is no design deficiency which causes flatheads to overheat, so any problems should be able to be remedied. Certain liquids transfer heat better than other liquids. The charts above are mainly irrelevant unless you're reaching temps that require you to boil the coolant - something we don't want to do & shouldn't be doing unless there is a problem. The final charts show the only advantage of 50/50 vs water + surfactant (wetting agent) is freeze protection. If you live in an area where it gets cold enough to freeze, I'd still only add enough anti-freeze to get the protection you need based on the latent heat & specific heat transfer abilities of water... But I'm stubborn that way!
If water is such a great advantage over glycol, how did the aircraft industry get away with reducing the size of the radiators on planes when they switched to it? Compare , say, a Curtiss P-1 rad with the one on a P-6. Same basic plane, more power. Little bitty rad on the newer one compared to the barn door rad on the P-1. Glycol rads are not half the size. Also, running straight water in an iron block is just begging for a corroded mess in a few years. Antifreeze has rust inhibitors in it. Aluminum heads will suffer from bi-metal corrosion on an iron block without the additives in most antifreezes, too.
Guys nice thread. All this info is good...great in fact, bu the the fact remains that there are soooooo mnany variables is keeping a flathead cool that EVERY ENGINE, even if built identically, can have different outcomes. I believe straight water IS a better coolant in heat convection than Glycol but I don't use tap water. I run distilled water that removes most of the impurities. I then added a bottle of water wetter as a surfectant to minimise hot spots/steam pockets. Lastly, I add Glycol free corrosion inhibitor which also lubes the water pumps and protects against electrolysis. I dont need antifreeze here in Oz. 180 deg stats too. A decent new rad, 12 psi cap, and a super clean, mol***es prepped block came out so clean that you could eat off the water jackets. There's no engine fan. Result? A blown flathead that NEVER gets hot even in 100+ deg temps - I have an electric pusher fan fitted in front of the rad behind the grille insert but rarely use it. Timing...? No vac advance, 8-10 initial, 14 deg mech = tot of 22/24 deg with Offy 400 heads. 8lbs of boost max. Modded dual point Mallory for the MSD. All this works killer, and NEVER getts hot. Don't forget guys that lean idle / mixtures will case her to run hot as will retarded timing. Coolant is super clean and heads have been off - NO corrosion. Works for me....great thread ! Rat
Will vinegar attack aluminum heads ? After seeing what it did to an old license plate on another thread, I have second thoughts.
I used vinegar in my 8ba four (yes 4) separate times afer I installed it 4 years ago. Each time I left in in a week and used baking soda to neutralize it. This past week I blew a head gasket on the right bank and removed my aluminum head and cleaned all the surfaces. I seen absolutely no corrosion on this head at the coolant p***ages. By the way The block p***ages were really clean. Naturally the vinegar will etch it.
Merc flathead with 160 thermostats cooled by a recored but stock non-pressurized 32 radiator.(water is still added through the chrome Ford cap the way Henry made it) Just a used engine out of a 49 Merc destined to be chopped and streetrodded. Absolutely nothing in the way of special tricks or flathead folk lore. I watch the temp gauge and about once a year it will start to approach 200 on a hot day in traffic then I know it's time to add water. Yeah... tap water and Kmart antifreeze. The stainless flex fan was used for clearance issues and not for extra cooling. Just my personal experience.
"could not get enough volume through the Stromberg 48's with so much overlap in the cam" Sorry - what does that mean?
The cam lobe lift, duration, and overlap had the valves open to pull more air volume into the motor than the 48 carb could deliver. Basically not enough carburation, carb was too small. Causing a lean condition and building excessive heat.
i had a hell of a time keeping my flatty cool in the beginning. Popped out both thermostats and stays right where she needs to be even in heavy 100 degree traffic
If you didn't know what this statement means: Then you definatly don't know what this means: If there is no such thing as lean condition, why do pistons melt down when there is a lack of fuel delivered? Why do motors that run lean run hotter than motors that run fat?
This ishat a friend of mine did with his flatty. He put two Moon Eyes water filled temp gages on... one on each head. Then, one hotter and one colder t-stat. The head that ran hotter got the colder t-stat. The idea being to divert flow to the side needing it most.
Your friend does realize that there's basically two separate cooling systems on a flathead - there are no adjoining water p***ages so you're not diverting flow anywhere... One side nearly always runs hotter than the other...
Yeah,I would love to here exactly how an engine work, especially how the Stromberg 48's are limited in design. I am always looking to advance my knowledge of all things mechanical. Can you explain a little on how it is possible to have too much valve overlap, I am not exactly sure of the ramifications of this situation. So, please elaborate for me this and other issues that may come about from improper cam selection. It appears you may have more information than I to share with the fine members of this board.
To some degree you're correct - depending on the year of the car and radiator. On earlier V8's the radiator was not seperated like in some of the later years -- so maybe the earlier post was thinking that by restricting one side, the other side was able to use more of the water that was just cooled by the radiator ??? Just a guess . . . IMHO many of the flathead tricks that were used probably had more to do with poor water pump impeller design and dirty systems than anything else. Having curved vanes and later style impellers would improve the flow and reduce the tendency to cavitate and/or leave air in the system. I think with good high flow pumps and a clean system, that there is absolutely no reason to restrict flow - other than thermostats for cold weather areas. If you look at the technology of the high performance OHV water pumps (Stewart, Meziere, etc), you'll see that they do everything they can to enhance flow - even recommending special high-flow thermostats. I've recently built a blown 392 Hemi with top-fuel heads that had water in the exhausts, but dry decks. I consulted quite a few people on how to go about cooling the beast. Every cooling expert I talked to said that you really want to increase flow as much as possible - and insure that you don't "dead head" the pump (you need to cycle water even with the thermostats closed - so always drill a 3/16 or so hole in the thermostats). I'm routing 3/8 NPT water lines from the back of the 392 decks through the back of the heads - with a very high flow pump. Cooling techniques and water pumps don't know about flatheads versus over heads - I believe the same fundamentals apply to all water cooled OEM engine designs.
Yeah, but you've still got two separate systems - a common water source to a large extend (although suction at bottom from pump will tend to draw vertically down with not a whole lot of mixing going on in tanks). True. Ford did this. First pumps had 3 vanes, then 4, then 6, then 8 in the final flathead design. Here we can agree to disagree. I believe keeping a higher pressure in the block helps prevent localized boiling at hot spots. However, I do agree with you in so far as you do want to keep flow through your pump to keep from simply agitating the water (I don't want to get into the "what's cavitation really mean" discussion). In general, I agree. But every cooling system is a compromise of some sort - whether it's packaging, primitive design, etc. We can address short-comings in the compromises and help ourselves out. There are certain things that work well for certain engines all the time. And you're right, there are certain things that work well for all engines.
Ghost of Christmas past. Interesting post... for those who have not seen it.By the way....Merry Christmas Everyone!
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