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Well lets see...got the Flowkooler installed, ran some of the Sumitt coolant and Got out this morning with 70° temps. It went well ok? Got up to temp pretty fast 180-190 took it out on the freeway for about 5 miles at 65 then pulled off and ran down city streets light to light for about 6 miles. Now i use both factory guage and a mech one. The factory gauge showed just short of the right middle mark. Hard to desctibe but the guage has a cold / off mark than a section were i would assume it is its operating range. About a 1/4 way left to right starts it then at the 3/4 mark it ends the range. So the temps stayed just short of the 3/4 mark which would be within operating range? Now the mech guage showed about 185-210 most of the time it was at the 190 mark. Seemed hot for the temps outside. Is it me or should my temps be 180 when its 70° outside? Repeated the same event when it was 85 out and basically the same thing. Took out some of the Sumitt coolant and put in some zerex G-05 and ran it in the garage for 15 min. Temps sat at the 3/4 mark or 190° the whole time. Interesting note while at a light i could see the gauge drop a little. Then would go back up cruising. There was a time when i would run at 180 on cool days.
Not sure if i should be concerned? Could be a tune issue too. Just seem to remember running 180 all the time unless it was over 90° outside then that was a different story.
Thinking i may have found a balance finaly not sure.
What is the science here?
My set up is this
160° Mildon high flow stat ( interesting note Mildon high flow stats have a small notch or hole built into them for air relief i guess)
The Flowkooler pump
440source passenger side outlet aluminum housing same port size as stock
26" aluminum ECP radiator 2 row 1" tubes
16 lb cap
Twin 12" electric fans with shroud pulling 3500 cfm
Timing at 10° inital 35 total
9.6:1 compression ratio.
One thing to note is the fans cool things down pretry fast. However i noticed they are pulling in super hot air into the engine bay so much so im not conviced my mech gauge is reading accurately. I noticed the temp gun reading at the stat housing would read one temp with the fans running but blocking the hot air with something gave a bit of a cooler reading. Note to self lazor heat gun reads hot air too.
The only thing i have changed since i felt it used to run at 180 all the time on cool days was the heads and carb.
Edited:
On another side note reading temps with the temp gun outside of the radiator with the gauges in the car reading the temps noted above, checking fins from top to bottom. When reading the top fins read anywhwre from 165-172 middle was about 140-154 bottom was 99- 118. Standing pretty close to the front of the car about 2 feet from the radiator at the most.
Bigmanjbmopar..
Not to belabor the point or be facious, the science is Thermodynamics. In addition to your stated conditions, can you be more specific re the following items: size of the radiator, its construction (copper or aluminum), number of fins per inch (air side), water pump sheave drive ratio (pump RPM vs crankshaft RPM), ideal average water pump RPM to deliver best volume. Necessary to try and determine flowing velocity in the engine and radiator.
Your "mechanical" gauge is a vapor pressure type (likely) with bulb inserted in the coolant stream. When the bulb is heated by the coolant, the internal vapor expands driving the guage pointer higher. In essence it is a pressure gauge calibrated to read temperature. I would believe its readings compared to the dash temp gauge, which is a volt meter driven by a thermister immersed in the coolant, whose resistance changes with respect to temperature changes. If it original, its accuracy is marginal at best.
As far as the thermostat goes...once its opening point is achieved, there is nothing more it can do....the radiator must be capable of handling the heat load presented. IF the coolant temps continue to incresse, several factors must be considered: its size, the circulating velocity and GPM, the ambient air temperature .... trying to cool hot coolant (200°F) with 100°F air is difficult. Its called the approach temperature and is a function of radiator surface area, coolant specific heat characteristics and air side volume and temperature. The greater the temperature difference the more heat is exchanged. Is your temperature readings (185° - 210°F) acceptable? My RS23V0A GTX exhibits similar readings under similar conditions and I'm OK with those readings. These may or may not be acceptable to you....only you can make the choice of what is acceptable to you. Just my opinion of course.
Bob Renton