Second Ride, Runs Hot

[Bobaloo]

NUTS - I feel your pain.
As they used to say on radio: you'll remember last time, I took my first ride in the 63 with a 348, 4 speed and 3:73 gears down the road. Well now, we have it tagged and can go for longer rides, and the first thing that pops up is, you guessed it - runts hot. I have a new Stewart Warner mechanical guage in the intake right behind the water neck. At speed on the 4 lane it gets up to 220, then starts to come back to about 210 for a normal. I think the thermostat is not a 180 or 190.
I am in Alabama, and its hot and humid here of course, this happened during outside temps of about 80, early one morning. The fan I have is a 7 blade, that almost touches the shroud, in fact when we first put it in, it did touch the shroud, and we had to persuade it a little to let the fan pass. When you torque it pretty good, it still tries to bang the shroud a little. Both the shorud and the fan were flea market finds, the shroud bolts up fine, and the fan was not with it originally.
I do not know what the measurements are.
At 220 am I okay or should I worry?

[tripower]

Is the fan 1/2 way in the shroud and are you running the correct shroud? :dunno You may want to check the thermostat and try the 6" pulley. Post some pics if you can.

[Nuts]

Bob,

It appears I have mostly fixed my overheating problems. I took her for a drive, in traffic, yesterday with temps at 100*. She never got over 190 until I had to wait through a long lite twice before moving. Still never went over 200*, so that is a big step for me and the 409.

After chasing my A$$ for 18 months, the solution was a water pump pulley from the 327, I removed from the car to install the 09. Still want to put the electric fan back in to help with temps at idle during the hot summer cruises downtown.

Hope your solution is easier found than mine. Good luck and good cruising...
:)
Bill

[Bobaloo]

Let me see if I understand, you put a smaller diameter pulley on and that did it?

[Nuts]

Don't forget I spent many $$$$ just to find the solution laying on the shop bench the whole time. :doh :dunno Changed to the stock pulley off the 327 and now she runs 190-195 with a 180 thermostat in 100* temps. Go figure !!!! :doh

[yellow wagon]

hows the tune on the car??? I see a lot of people overlooking the tuning. If the car is a little lean, your temps will rise. Keep it a hair on the fat side rather than lean to keep your temps in check. A bottle of Redline water wetter in the radiator helped me also.

Good luck!

[models916]

220 is pushing it, but ok if that is all the hotter it gets. Thermostat heats the engine not cools it. Once it opens it becomes a restriction. Try running without a thermostat and see if there is any change. Thermostats sometimes go to a part open position. Do you have vacuum advance? Mine would run 10-20 cooler at speed with the vacuum advance hooked up. If you are traveling at 50 mph or higher, the fan and shroud would have very little to do with cooling. Check for air flow restrictions. Also check the upper pulley Dia. I would run Syn Oil until you are sure you are not going to overheat.

[Bobaloo]

May have a happy ending. Today I picked it up from the muffler shop, and drove it about 6 miles - part of it up a 800 foot mountain, where our subdivision is. It never got over 190. Outside temp was 98 at the time. Timing is set at 8 degrees, like the book says. Maybe this is over.

[tripowerguy]

As long as you have a high pressure cap [15 lbs.] then 220 will not hurt. You must not let the coolant boil. If it boils then air enters the system and you have hot and cool spots which causes the metal to expand at different rates and blows head gaskets. As was already pointed out the fan must be half in and half out of the shroud. And as pointed out above 35-40 mph the fan is doing nothing but blocking air. It sounds like you have the problem fixed but there are others who read this that might profit from the information. Overheating is a curse.:bang Roy