Small block mopar overheating

I got the distributor swapped out but when I was starting it up to tune it my solenoid in the starter went out. So I spent my morning switching it with one I had in my stash. And it starts now

As crazy as it sounds I've never set the timing before and don't really know what to do.

 

Hey man, first time for everything!

First off, get a timing light, put the inductive pickup on the #1 plug wire (Drivers side front plug) and the power cables to appropriate places on the car.

unplug the vacuum line from the advance can on the distributor and plug it with a small bolt, golf tee, whatever is handy.

Find your timing marks, clean them up on both the balancer and the timing chain cover (a little chalk helps to see the mark) Figure out where you want it to be on the timing chain cover (start with 10 degrees before) and mark that with chalk.

loosen the distributor clamp so you can just turn the housing

Start the engine and point the light at the marks

turn the housing of the distributor very slightly until your marks line up

tighten the clamp and check again to make sure it didn't move.

Shut it down.

Put the vacuum line back on the distributor.

Done.

 

Ok so what does 18 initial and 34-36 total mean?? And does the vacuum can get hooked to the drivers side of the carb or the passenger on these. It seems to run better on the passenger side. Which is the timed vacuum port.

 

What I described is setting the initial timing, that's where it idles. the advance weights move out as revs increase until the limit, and that is total advance. To check total, you will need a dial back timing light, or as I prefer, a timing tape or extra marks on your balancer. With the light hooked up and pointed at the marks, you rev the motor to where your advance is all in, and that will give you the total timing.

This diagram shows the vacuum port layout on an Edlebrock carb and 9000 series carter AFB's.

 

Lat year A buddy's 76 Corvette got REAL Hot after he put in a new radiator with elect fan, but left off some OEM baffle (maybe under the nose of the car or under the radiator?).
He said it got hot idling, driving slow medium or highway. After adding the baffle it instantly ran fine.

 

Dan, that would normally be the case if you are driving around and have problems with the car heating at speed. By leaving a baffle out, the incoming cooling air was allowed to go past the radiator and out without transfering any heat from the radiator.

The original poster in this case is having a very typical problem to hot rods and that is overheating when sitting in traffic. That is telling us two things, The radiator capacity is a bit too small, and that airflow through it at low speed where the fan is supposed to be doing the work is not efficiant enough. A shroud would hep a bunch with this deal as it would concentrate the fan's area across the core's width and length to use every bit of transfer area it has to give. With just the fan working in the center it's only pulling air over the square inches of core the fan covers. Everything out side of that path isn't working as efficiantly as it could.

 

Ok so it took me a while to figure out but not only was the distributor in there ass backwards and the plug wires weren't even close to the right firing order. Makes me feel like an ass to have trusted whoever owned that cordoba I stripped to get it right. I got it all back together and fiddled with the mixture screws and now you barely touch the key and she fires right up and finally sounds like a car.... And damn good!! And with all of the start cycles I put it through to get the timing and carb set up (about 4 straight hours worth) it never went above 190 degrees. And I noticed the exhaust used to be extremely hot out the tailpipe and now you could hold your hand there indefinitely and not suffer burns.

I'm in the process of building a shroud for the fan, all I have to do is cut the big round circle out of the center. Then I'll paint and install it and let you guys know how it's doing in a few days.

Thanks for all of the help everybody.

 

Good, you learned something and you got it to run like a Mopar should. Hope the shroud does the trick for you.

 

Yeah I finally got comfortable with distributors... I only had to pull the damn thing out 8 or so times before I got it sorted out. It's insane how much the engine calmed down. Looking back on it, before I changed the distributor the engine shook violently. Now you wouldn't even know it was running if you were deaf lol. It barely moves.

 

Ok so I drove it quite a bit the last couple of days, including a 90 mile round trip to a car show, and here's how it went...

I flushed the cooling system out really well and believe me, it was pretty damn nasty!! I filled it with a 50/50 mix of antifreeze, and I put on a 15 pound radiator cap to stop the violent boiling over. The only thing I didn't get to was putting on the fan shroud since I haven't finished fabbing it yet.

The car runs perfect on the highway never going over 190, but sitting at idle for a while it still creeps up to 230 degrees. I've also noticed that the temp gauge will read 190 while I'm driving along and I can park it with it still at 190 and shut it off and the water temp will shoot up to 230 and it'll spit a little water up... It did that twice, I think it spit up because I may have put a bit too much fluid in the radiator. I think that the temp started shooting up when I park it because the higher pound radiator cap is keeping the hot water in the system instead of spitting it up and the heat soak is making the temp gauge go to 230.

So obviously my next step is to get that shroud on there and test it, if that doesn't keep it cooler, then I'm going to look into changing the radiator to one that I can use a larger diameter fan on without worrying about it cutting up radiator hoses. Not only do I not want to mess with wiring up a electric fan, but with my radiator mounted in front of the core support, the top bar of the support is in the way of using a fan that would cover the majority of the radiator.it only leaves me about a 16 by 16 inch square to fit a fan.

 

Sounds like you're well on your way to getting stuff sorted out. The shroud will probably help quite a bit, but eventually you will need to go up to a larger radiator and fan unit. By the way, in my opinion a mechanical fan is much more efficiant than an electric one. I have bought literally every electric fan on the market in almost every price rande and have yet to find ANYTHING that will last an entire Phoenix summer or work as efficiantly as a good mechanical and shroud. The core support and shroud uniot is the last of 4 different designs I have tried on my car over the years. This is just flat over kill, but damn effective.

 

I tried out my makeshift fan shroud this past week and it wasn't bringing the temp down hardly at all.

So I found a pretty good deal on a flex-a-lite trimline 16inch electric fan and took the plunge. It's the exact same dimensions as my radiator core and fit like a glove after some modification to the radiator core support. I have it wired into a two position toggle switch so I can leave it off while I'm on the highway and can turn it on when I hit town and get into traffic.

So far it works beautifully. It's been 90 degrees here today and the temp gauge doesn't even think of going over 190. I know that electric fans aren't traditional but neither was the shitty flex fan I took off!!!

I'm really stoked that I finally got this under control, but I still think I'm going to switch to a 180 degree high volume thermostat, just to get the gauge reading down.

Thanks for all the help guys.

 

Glad you got going....just a little info for the future.

If your rad was cooling it fine on the road...then there was no stopage in the passage ways and it was efficient and large enough.

The shroud....2/3 of the fan blades covered and 1/3 out....close to the ends of the fan blades...like an inch or so....and NO gaps next to the rad.

 

what a damn Ford radiator ?.....a Mustang at that ?....Mopars have the biggest tubes running in them - a two core is better than a three core on a GM or Ford....and a three core - well when my Ford F-250 I had for years continued to blow it self/tanks after about 2-3 years....I swapped in a extra Imperial/440 I had around....been in there a looooong time....same guy has done my radiators for years....

 

Glad you got it working better - I don't like electric fans either, but if it is working for you, go with it. Run much better with timing sorted out don't they?

 

One thing most people don't know about small block mopar is they made water pumps with 2 different sizes of impellers. Most rebuilds you find have the small impeller on them. My 39 Plymouth truck had a 360 in it and would run 190 all day at 70 mph with a/c on the interstate. Hit an exit ramp and the temp would climb to 220, 230 almost imediately. I had a shroud too. I remembered the large impeller waterpump trick and started looking for one. I finally looked at new pumps instead of rebuilds and found one with the large impeller. That solved the low rpm heat problem. I believe the large impellor pumps came on trucks. They move alot more water.