I'm goin home this weekend from college,so I should be able to do some work on the car.

As some may know, my car is godly slow after my new mods.
Also, the car seems to be runnin a little warm at idle, like when sittin for awhile in traffic or at the track. Like it will climb close to 230* , this is with a 160*, fan shroud, and griffin aluminum radiator.

Also, when the car gets around 200* I would say, it gets a bit difficult to start up after shutting it off. It starts fine cold.

The timing is set right, it was checked at 2500 rpms with the adv blocked off.

Any ideas on what I should check next?

 

Mark, concerning the high temps, I dont think that a 160* thermostat does a lot of good unless you get a reprogrammed chip. From the factory, I think the fan is not supposed to kick in until about 200 something or so. All it will do is circulate the hot coolant instead of cool it down via the fan. If you really want to take advantage of the 160* thermostat, you should get a custom chip to make the fan kick in sooner or else wire it for a manual fan switch. The manual fan switch is a LOT cheaper, hehe. That's what I would do if you want to lower your temp.

 

You also may not be moving enough coolant at idle/low RPMs. Is your pump original, and how many miles?

 

You may want to check out some aftermarket fans or maybe a dual fan setup from a stock car if you've still got the stock LG4 fan. Like Vader said, the water pump may not be adequate anymore. If you're just sitting there(not after racing the engine) and the temp creeps up that high, the pump propellars are probably too corroded away to move enough coolant. I felt that mine wasn't doing the job it should so I've got a stewart pump (flows 40% more than stock supposedly) waiting to be installed with my discounted slp runners this winter. 80 bucks shipped from stewart.

 

I am running a mechanical fan with an upper and lower fan shroud. Also, before the cam swap, I usually ran about 10* warmer than the stat rating down the highway and only about 20-30* warmer in traffic.

It is the stock water pump Vader, with oh about 90k miles on it by now.

 

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I'm runnin a mechanical fan.

 

I was also lookin for other ideas about why the car is running so slow. How do I tune the carb AF screws, I thought I read somewhere about hooking a vacuum gauge up, guess I'll go search the carb board.


Found what I needed to know, but where do I hook up the vacuum guage?

Any thing else to check out?

 

Definitely check your AF mixture, if it is running too lean now that would solve both of your problems at least partly.
Since the lean condition makes the car run hotter and obviously not enough fuel to get full potential.
Definitely get a vacuum gauge and try to max the pressure, its pretty easy, far easier than burning PROMs.

Good luck.

 

on holleys you turn the idle mixture screw counter clockwise to richen the mixture, I think edelbrocks are the same way? I'll be working on one next week and I'd like to know for sure.

 

Mark

Hook up your vacuum gauge to manifold, not ported vacuum. When I tune carbs, I start with idle. I like to see the lowest possible rpm with the highest possible vacuum signal. Next I move to tip in response. You know, when you just begin to move the throttle. I have found that most of the tuning comes from trying one thing and testing it to see if it helps or hurts. I'm sure you know that but it doesn't hurt to say it again. Oh yeah, pull some plugs every once to see how it looks.