i've asked questions in the cooling section and have had no luck........

my car has a hard time keeping cool during cruises and otherwise tight traffic.

i have a 2 year old 160 thermo and stock radiator that seems to be working good, my radiator isn't blocked and the fluid looks to be at a good stock ratio......

my problem is with all the ceramic coating the engine retains alot of heat and the fact that the fans supposedly don't come on til such a late time it scares me to even drive the car when the temp goes that high.........

should i use waterwetter? should i just hook up the manual switch? i don't know what to do since everything is pretty much new and seems to be working good yet the car heats up quick in tight spots? please help.

when turning the heat on does that actually cool the car down or is it just the secondary fan coming on when it gets really hot that cools the engine?

 

Hook up a manual OVERRIDE switch so it will still come on auto, but you can turn them on say when you enter a drive through. Then yea I'd run some water wetter, the stuff works period. ALso I just leaned my engine out and advanced the timing alot over the last few days (Pushing my tuning limits) and i've noticed that oddly the weather is hotter but im starting to run cooler.

Just some ideas

 

standard ignition ts-136 will get ya halfway there-its a fan switch for 87 grand nat. turns one fan on around 200 or so. replace the one on the rt. cyl. head. replace stat with a 180, but drill 2 holes for coolant bypass\steam escape\constant flow bypassing thru radiator. you could plug the internal bypass but that isnt necessary. make the holes about 3\16 inch. also minor bennie if you reduce coolant concentration to 70-30, summer use only. thats the extent of the easy trix. as long as your sure the rest of the system is up to the task.

 

Don’t want to sound like a smart *ss but your air dam is still in place right? It is the only way to cool while moving.

 

How do you know you're running so hot? The factory gauge?

I'm not saying yours is horribly inaccurate or anything. Hook up a laptop with some scan software and watch the temp reading on it while you drive around. You might be surprised at just how cool your car actually runs.

I have a dead nuts on temp gauge, but when it reads 233°, my scanner reads 197°. This is just the difference between the sender in the head and the sensor on the intake. Heads get hot!

 

Thats a good point. I've noticed the same thing on my GN. The temp I get off the temp gauge is usually about 20 degrees higher than what the scan tool gives.

 

Kandied,
If you don't want to mess with the manual switch, you might want to consider using a different fan switch. When I installed my 160* thermostat I also put in the hypertech fan switch that turns on the secondary fan sooner (176* on/166* off). That helped me FWIW.

switch

-Schultzy

 

Maybe a stupid question, but what is your water/antifreeze ratio? If I were you, I would run the MINIMUM amount of antifreeze possible (check the side of the jug). Or, theoretically speaking, I believe you could run pure distilled water IN THE SUMMER TIME ONLY with a good corrosion inhibitor additive and I think that would help quite a bit. Don' forget that water does a much better job of cooling your engine than antifreeze. Antifreeze is present to prevent corrosion and...well...keep your coolant from freezing in the colder temps (obviously). I run 50/50 on my '91 TPI Regal , but that is my daily driver and the coolant only gets changed once a year. I also don't have any overheating probs. Hope this helps.

 

Ummm water pump....lubrication....

 

http://www.inccn.net/techforum.htm

Freezing is the only thing they mention. I am still looking for the other Hot Rod/Car Craft article that addressed cooling issues.

 

I don't know if you checked this, but look at your lower raditor hose and make sure the metal support spring inside the hose hasen't rusted away. If it has the water pump suction can colapase the hose causing a major restriction at cruzing speeds. Hope this helps.


cody

 

thanks everyone for the wonderful suggestions as it's greatly appreciated!!

i'm working on trying to find a program similar to autotap that will work with the obd-I and i will also check all the other areas above and report back.

i cleaned my radiator of all the debris as well as made sure all my hoses, fluid, and air damn was setup properly........so i need to go with some other ideas.

if anyone comes up with something different than the above in the mean time let me know.

thanks again.

 

Cooling system health is easy and basic, i think everythihgs been mentioned above but i'll quick do my checklist just to make sure (and i;ll probably forget something anyway)

- Is the radiator cap known to be good.
- Is your AF mix lean. I never run more than 1/3 antifreeze in my cars, AF is a horrible coolant, and i've fixed cars with overheating issues simply by thinning the mix with water. Also, water wetter is completely useless in strong mixes of AF as well.
- Are all the hoses in good shape, and all the clamps are good and TIGHT. Barely loose clamps can sometimes let a slight amount of pressure weep when hot, giving you the same hard to figure out gremlins that a bad rad cap will give you.
- If it's a cooling under cruise RPM / load issue, a collapsing lower hose is a possibility
- For the same issue: airdam
- Obvious radiator blockages, etc
- Is the waterpump old. Over time the impeller can corrode / wear out and you'll be losing cooling efficiency.
- Defective t-stat. Doens't matter what it 'looks' like, it matters how it works. You can test this with a pan of water on a stove and a good cooking thermometer. You heat the water and observe the temperature that it starts to open, fully opens, etc.

As for the stock fan turn-on temps, as you've observed, it's too damn high. Definitely swap in a lower temp switch, or reprogram the PROM to turn the fans on at a reasonable temp. Even with the stock too high temps though the cooling system should have no problem keeping the temp under control if there are no problems with the system. Do yourself a favor and make sure you know for a fact that everything i mentioned above is OK. I hate to be cocky, but none of my cars ever have a cooling problem, and it's because i don;t take anything for granted, even something like a rad cap that looks perfect can make you chase your tail for weeks.

 

all of this stuff works, but here is what i would do. keep the 160 thermo or replace it with a fresh 1, get a new fan switch or manual fan switch so the fan comes on around 180 at least, switch the coolant to 70/30 from 50/50 and run a bottle or 2 of water wetter.

i run a thermomaster chip (not by choice just what i haveso the fan comes on at 160) 70/30 coolant, 1 bottle water wetter and a 160 stat and i can let my car idle for 30 minutes and never break 160, just off the freeway the motor is hot and the trans is hot, if i sit for a while then it will reach 180 and this is with 1 fan disabled on a 2 fan setup.

i really gotta fix that 2nd fan.

 

thanks guys i'm on it!