Pete's and others over heating issues...

[James_Douglas]

Guys,

I think it would be a good use of forum time for us to start a technical thread here about ideas and thoughts about the things we can do to put a stake in the heart of over-heating issues.

I have had issues in slow traffic and when climbing long grades. I am in Northern California and it is not terribly hot or humid. I am worried when I take my car through the edge of Death Valley to the Grand Canyon this September that I could have problems.

I have out on a flex-a-lite series 400 fan at their recommendation as this fan pulls more air at low idle than anything else they make including their fancy stainless fans.

I use Red Line Water Wetter, as it has helped in tow vehicles in the past, so I figure it can not hurt.

I need to get the rubber part atop the radiator which seals the radiator to the hood fixed.

I need to seal the sides and bottom of the radiator so all air goes through the radiator and not around it.

I am planning on pulling off my cool looking oil filter, the one I dot from Don C, and replacing it with a spin on filter AND putting an oil cooler out in front of the radiator.

The only other things I was thinking about was perhaps using Evans Coolant and perhaps adding a water injection kit that I could turn on to cool the air/fuel charge when in bad traffic on a hot day or when going up long grades.

My engine block was ACID dipped so it is as clean as they get and I had a new radiator built with a high performance core.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this subject?

Best, James

[claybill]

with all that, how can you be overheating....

once on an old ford i hooked up an external heater core to the heater hoses and routed it down by the frame..it solved my problem there..!!

bill

[jd52cranbrook]

I have shown several times the shroud I made up for my radiator. I have moved the radiator forward to make room for the double belt unit for my AC. Am running a flex fan, 17 inch.

I have also welded shut all passages from the radiator housing, (old heater opening, etc) , to make sure ALL air coming into the engine compartment passes through the radiator.

I also have a water recovery tank installed that works very well.

Last year I took the car from Mt. View, CA, (By San Jose) to Detroit using a pusher electric fan that put out 2000 cfm,, (very high). Also running without thermostat. I found going over hills I was getting hot in third (not OD engaged).

I learned from some old pros taking the thermostat out is not such a great idea as it causes two issues;

1. With less restriction, water passes through the radiator too fast at high rpm, giving it less time to cool.

2. High flow also causes water turbulence, not good either.

I have since put the thermostat back in, but I did drill some small pin holes around the circumference of the piece to have a bit of constant water flow. With the new shroud, fan 1/2 from radiator, and channeling the air toward the radiator, I am hoping to have licked the heat problem, and still have my nice, cool, AC in the car. I am heading to Detroit once again in August in the car this year. We shall see.

I have run Red Line water wetter in a Prowler with heat issues due to the Paxton Supercharger I put it. No help. I have a friend with similar car running the Evans set up they offer. No help. Horsepower causes mucho heat. Real trick to solving it is to get the engine to breath better.

Anyway, this is my way, and it works. I am sure someone has other ideas though.

[Normspeed]

Mine used to run hot on the freeway in warm weather, and it did a total boilover trying to pull my teardrop up a mountain grade in warm weather. Solution? All I can say is, I had the block hot tanked (it was full of rust and sludge), new water distribution tube (old one was corroded and clogged), new water pump, and purchased a recored radiator. It now runs cool all the time. I recently pullled up the same mountain grade with the trailer and it didn't overheat. I run a 160 thermostat, and set my initial timing with a timing light, at 4 degrees BTDC. I run 50/50 coolant and water mix.

[James_Douglas]

Norm,

In my case, block acid dipped, new core, new everything inside the engine. On the freeway it is fine unless I am pulling up a big long hill. A little bit of a problem in 15 MPH stop and go.

I think the stop and go will be fixed with a shroud and sealing up the area around the radiator. The up hill thing has me worried though.

James

[Don Coatney]

On the freeway it is fine unless I am pulling up a big long hill. A little bit of a problem in 15 MPH stop and go. James

So what is the problem? When our cars were new there were no freeways. And there was a lot less traffic. Even today in California you will see signs telling new cars to turn off air conditioners when driving uphill to prevent overheating.

My engine went over 200 degrees when I got stuck in a traffic jam with around a 90 degree ambient temperature and a quick slow down from several hundred miles of 70+ MPH. All traffic was at a standstill so I simply pulled to the side of the road, killed the engine, and raised the hood to sit it out. Once traffic began to move I cranked her back up and joined the flow. My engine cooled back down to 190 degrees directly at a speed of 50 MPH. I continued to drive for about 150 miles on the freeway at 70+ MPH and a temperature of 180-190 degrees then pulled off for a fuel atop. With my engine turned off while fueling my gauge jumped to around 220 as it usually does. No water was expelled as my radiator was not overfilled. After fueling I left the freeway and hit a two lane road with several hills where I could only run around 50MPH due to traffic and curves. After about fifteen minutes of running this road the theromostat controlling my electric pusher fan (this electric fan is the only one I have) shut the fan down as the water temperature in my engine had dropped below 170 (the setpoint of the theromastat).

What I learned is there is a direct connection between my right foot and the temperature of my engine. Less pressure with my right foot equates to lower temperatures. I do not see this as a problem.

If those of you who claim to have temperature problems drive 650 or more miles in one day with ambient temperatures hovering around 90 degrees and have to do more than I did then I may view this as a problem. After all my car and radiator were made in 1948 when driving conditions were a lot different than they are today.

Drive em and enjoy the challange and excitment of the road!

[James_Douglas]

So what is the problem? When our cars were new there were no freeways. And there was a lot less traffic. Even today in California you will see signs telling new cars to turn off air conditioners when driving uphill to prevent overheating.

My engine went over 200 degrees when I got stuck in a traffic jam with around a 90 degree ambient temperature and a quick slow down from several hundred miles of 70+ MPH. All traffic was at a standstill so I simply pulled to the side of the road, killed the engine, and raised the hood to sit it out. Once traffic began to move I cranked her back up and joined the flow. My engine cooled back down to 190 degrees directly at a speed of 50 MPH. I continued to drive for about 150 miles on the freeway at 70+ MPH and a temperature of 180-190 degrees then pulled off for a fuel atop. With my engine turned off while fueling my gauge jumped to around 220 as it usually does. No water was expelled as my radiator was not overfilled. After fueling I left the freeway and hit a two lane road with several hills where I could only run around 50MPH due to traffic and curves. After about fifteen minutes of running this road the theromostat controlling my electric pusher fan (this electric fan is the only one I have) shut the fan down as the water temperature in my engine had dropped below 170 (the setpoint of the theromastat).

What I learned is there is a direct connection between my right foot and the temperature of my engine. Less pressure with my right foot equates to lower temperatures. I do not see this as a problem.

If those of you who claim to have temperature problems drive 650 or more miles in one day with ambient temperatures hovering around 90 degrees and have to do more than I did then I may view this as a problem. After all my car and radiator were made in 1948 when driving conditions were a lot different than they are today.

Drive em and enjoy the challange and excitment of the road!

Don,

I appreciate your point of view. However, I DID want this thread to be a technical one and not a philosophical one.

In my case I want to have my cake and eat it as well.

So, back to the issue. What technical things can we do, within the confines of not tossing the entire power plant , to improve the cooling capability of these cars ?

James

[55 Fargo]

How true Don, when you started to cruise at 50 mph, were you also going against the wind, that seems to help with these old cars, mine will drop it's temp down 5 degrees against the wind, evn if the wind is hot.......Fred

[blueskies]

...block acid dipped, new core, new everything inside the engine. ...

Like James, my block was dipped and was clean as a whistle when it went back together with a new water distribution tube. Everything else in and on the engine is new as well.

I think I may have just a tad too much advance on my timing. I also have both of the carbs on my dual setup connected to the advance on the distributor. I noticed on my trip to Tulsa that when I had my foot heavy on the throttle on uphill grades that it would heat up much faster than if I accelerated very slowly or just maintained speed. Wondering if I'm pulling too much on the vaccum advance.

My car ran pretty much an even temp no matter what prior to my messing with the oil/pump and timing. I drove it in a parade a couple of years ago, it was hot outside and I was crawling along the parade route. The temp guage climbed up some, but not to the point it did on the Tulsa trip. I live in the mountains, and regularly drive the car up steep 10% grades and it has never overheated in the past. Not sure what could be different now other than the timing, but it ran much cooler before...

Pete

[Lou Earle]

On both old and we vehicles fans are for one purpose- maintaining air flow at speeds under 35 mph.

That is why Gm went to the clutch fan and the feather edged fan was invented- to reduce engine demand by the fan above 35 mph. If you have an over heating problem above 35 mph the issue is something other than the fan or shroud. And it can be many things. But if everything is in tip top shape and it is overheating then the volume of water is inadequate. I had this on 49 caddy in which I installed a 500 Ci caddy engine.

If your are overheating in stand still traffic but on the road driving over 35 mph then your issue is more than likely air flow across the radiator- IE inadequate fan, fan to far from radiator no shroud( if fan is within 1 inch of radiator no shroud will help the fan is pulling all it can. If over inch away a shroud can increase the air flow up to 30 percent.

The above infor is from a vocational school text book and Tex Smith's How to build flathead fords book.

Lou

[James_Douglas]

I am looking at a novel idea...

I have the 6Volt fan that I took off the front of the radiator. I also noted that Pera-Cool has some small 1.5"x10"x14" engine oil coolers.

I took a look at the front of my car and I have a lot of space between the inside of the grill and the radiator.

I was thinking of cutting a 15" round hole in the lower splash pan. Mount the cooler in the hole with the fan on top. Build a little sheet metal housing with a 2" x 16" opening facing the bottom of the grill. I have all the wiring and relays in place from before.

When prolonged idling I can kick on the fan. When rolling down the highway or pulling up big hills the ram air will cool the oil. With a smooth top, it will not disturb the air flow to the radiator.

It may be over the top but, I could make the sheet metal top a little pan say 2" deep. In very hot weather, I could drop some ice in it (with some screen on it so a hunk does not fly into the radiator) and it would cool the radiator and the oil cooler below.

...thoughts, James

[eric wissing]

James that sounds like it would work. More oil and cooler oil has to help. An extreme measure would be to fabricate a larger oil pan. An air cooled Porsche911 has what ?12 qts or some ungodly amount. Eric

[randroid]

Gents,

A few thoughts:

Oil performs three functions in our engines; lubrication (doh!), cleaning (detergent oil does this), and cooling. All oil has a finite capacity for heat transfer, and racing oil transfers heat faster than regular oil. It's more expensive than regular oil but not prohibitively so, and when I ran an air-cooled VW in SE Arizona I never incurred over heating even in 119 degree weather. I didn't have an external oil cooler because those take high volume pumps, which I also didn't have, but I would have felt better with 30% more oil in the system.

I was once married into a racing family and they installed an external oil cooler on the race car that operated only by convection current (the outlet from the pan was mounted higher than the inlet on the right side of the pan because the car turned left for a living and they wanted to ensure the cooler wouldn't starve and develop an air bubble). It was surprisingly effective and when I suggested that perhaps if the flow to the cooler came from the oil pump pressure relief valve it would be more efficient with at least a partial flow and one fewer hole cut in the pan it went beyond their imagination but I still think it would be worth investigating.

A law of thermodynamics is that energy (heat) can be neither created nor destroyed; only transferred. Work with this because it's true.

I've mentioned running the heater in hot weather in past threads and it works in every liquid cooled automobile. We have a cowl vent that will blow the heat away from our tootsies, and even when we think those tootsies are too warm take solace that this is heat being dispensed (transferred) from the engine.

When an impeller rotates it slings a lot of air sideways through centrifugal force and because of this ducted fans were developed and increased impeller (fan) efficiency was created cheaply. Those with metal-working capabilities may consider doing something along these lines, but the greatest efficiencies occur when the tip of the blades are within very close tolerances to the duct, and our fans weren't built with this in mind. Some aftermarket fans might be milled to do a decent job; experiment for yourselves because I'm working only theoretically here.

Let me know if any of this helps.

-Randy

[Normspeed]

I'm with Mr. Undercoatney on the challenge and excitement of the road. There's a certain amount of Zen involved in traveling with these old rigs but that's part of the fun. 1940 era cooling systems may not have all the performance features of a new vehicle, but it's fun diagnosing engine behavior based on 4 gauges, plus sense of hearing and sense of smell.

[Don Coatney]

I am planning on pulling off my cool looking oil filter, the one I got from Don C, and replacing it with a spin on filter AND putting an oil cooler out in front of the radiator.Best, James

JAMES;

Consider this. As opposed to removing the full flow oil filter you could tap an oil supply from the oil galley on the side of the block at the same location the by-pass oil filters connect. Run this by-pass oil supply through an oil cooler and return this cooled oil to the oil pan using the same connections that a by-pass oil filter uses. My guess is that a setup like this would do a good job of dropping the oil temperature and still allow you to use the factory full flow filtering system.

[Lou Earle]

On my 49 Cadillac engine it had a bypass oil filtering system also. I installed an oil cooler on the return line so oil ran from engine to filter to cooler to engine - just ran regular old hose to the cooler and back to the engine.

It reduced the oil temp from the in line to the outline by about 20 degrees.

Another trick used by the old guys( you can buy them this way now) was to attach 1/2 inch coppers pipes to the bottom of the oil pan with a trumpet flair in the front to force air over the bottom of the oil pan.

They are now made that way for some racing applications.

My understanding is that oil dissipates about 30 percent of the engine heat the radiator about 35 to -40 percent and the rest is by exhaust and radiation off the engine .

Lou

[blueskies]

There's a certain amount of Zen involved in traveling with these old rigs but that's part of the fun. 1940 era cooling systems may not have all the performance features of a new vehicle, but it's fun diagnosing engine behavior based on 4 gauges, plus sense of hearing and sense of smell.

Norm-

I with you on this, even though it's not what James was after with his original question... After the 3300 miles to Tulsa and back, I have memorized every nuance of my '50. Part of the adventure of this trip was to find out what motoring across the country in 1950 was like. As well as dealing with any situations that may have come up along the way. There was plenty of Zen to soak up over all those miles.

I would do this trip again tomorrow if it weren't for having to work for a living . I'm not quite over the depression of sitting here at my desk. I liked it much better sitting behind the wheel of my Plymouth watching America go by...

Pete

[RobertKB]

I'm with Norm, Don, and Pete on this one. Our cars are not new and will never behave like a modern cars no matter what is done to them. They are using 1940/50's technology designed for the type of driving done back then. You just cannot expect them to behave like new vehicles. I remember driving on holidays when my dad had a brand new '54 Plymouth with overdrive and he boiled it over in the mountains. He just parked it until it cooled down. Pete, I admire you doing the trip to Tulsa and back especially as you were not sure about things when you left. You did a lot of work prior to leaving and didn't really have a chance to check things out. Don, I am very impressed with the fact you drove your old girl 650 miles in one day. My heartfelt congratulations to both you guys!

[blueskies]

Here's another question...

Can the non-pressurized system on my '50 handle a pressure cap on the radiator, say a five pounder?

More pressure = less tempurature

Pete

[Lou Earle]

Your 50 radiator can handle a 500 pound pressure cap because no matter what cap u use the overflow tube flows from the bump in the center of the radiator so it is no pressurized and the cap is not relevant. Now if your overflow pipe come out of the radiator fill up tube it is not a stock radiator and it is a pressurized system and most of those can handle a 7 pound cap. But why? If it is not overheating the cap is not necessary

[Lou Earle]

Actually, if I understand it correctly, a pressurized system only raises the boiling point but it does not reduce the temperature in the radiator.

Lou

[TodFitch]

Actually, if I understand it correctly, a pressurized system only raises the boiling point but it does not reduce the temperature in the radiator.

Lou

You have it: Pressurizing the system raises the boiling point.

Pressurizing the cooling system raises the boiling point of the coolant. And the heat dissipation through the heat exchanger (radiator) is proportional to the difference in temperatures of the media (coolant and air) as well as the flow rate of the media (coolant flow and air flow) and, of course, the design of the radiator.

So raising the boiling point allows you to run hotter which raises the heat transfer through the radiator into the air.

There have been a number of good suggestions here. One I have not seen: a thicker radiator. As I recall in the 1960s in Arizona it was pretty common to install a "desert core", basically a radiator core with an extra row of tubes. In the 1970s I had a 318 cu. in. V8 in a Dodge D200 truck. The fix for keeping that beast cool was putting in the heavy duty radiator.

[Jerry Roberts]

My non-stock radiator needed to be recored and was a 3-row . I asked the repair shop to make it a 4-row and my vehicle now runs at 160 . ( perhaps a little too cold )

[jd52cranbrook]

You have it: Pressurizing the system raises the boiling point.

There have been a number of good suggestions here. One I have not seen: a thicker radiator. As I recall in the 1960s in Arizona it was pretty common to install a "desert core", basically a radiator core with an extra row of tubes.

Good point. A three row radiator was the first thing I put in the car. It has been so long I forgot to mention it. Along with installing a pressure cap of 9 lbs with a recovery tank. The recovery tank may not help it run cooler per say, but it does keep me from refilling every time the car gets in hot weather.

[BobT-47P15]

So.....any radiators with this round center connector for the overflow tube is a non-pressurized system. Have never tried to use a pressure cap on one of these cars. Mine was getting up to about 200 going to Tulsa as the outside temp was around 90 degrees and we were going about 55 mph. Temp would go down when we slowed down. On the return trip, air temp was probably 10 degrees cooler and car stayed right at 180 to 190. My fan blade is probably an inch or less from the radiator. Drained, flushed and refilled radiator recently with 50/50 antifreeze--water mix. Used the pre-mixed antifreeze this time, but usually use the old style and add water from the hose.