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You might want to flush out the block....not sure on a 327 but on my 283 there is a petcock on each side of the block....some have bolts in them. Take those out and see how much crud comes out....sometimes you have to poke around in those drain holes to break the rust/crud loose. My little '61 idles for 10 minutes or more right at 180* in Orlando heat....yours should too !
Also, sometimes those aftermarket water pumps have lousy impeller blades or the castings are too thick which reduces water flow. If you look at an original "509" pump you will see how thin the casting is to ensure good water flow...
Last edited by Frankie the Fink; Aug 4, 2012 at 11:50 AM.
Maybe I will while I have it drained. But it cools right down once you get it above 30mph or so. Runs right about 180 on the freeway, even on a 90 degree day. So I assume water is moving through the system well enough. But I'm no mechanic, is that assumption false?
Since we are talking about over heating I thought this was interesting. I was watching an old rerun of route 66. They were in a 1962 corvette and the car ran out of gas. The camera took a shot of the gas gauge and there to the right was the temp gauge which was right on 180 degrees. Now I know the car could have been running for a short time or long time when they took the shot but I thought it was interesting anyway. I have always heard 180/190 was the usual running temp so maybe that’s correct.
If it runs fine once you are moving that shows that the system is flowing correctly as you said. One thing I know about fans is, it is better to have 2 smaller fans than one big one. The bigger the fan, the louder it is.
Spal makes great fans, but their 16" fan sounds like an airplane engine compared to their dual 11" model and they flow around the same amount of air.
Make sure you use relays to run them if you do go electric.
I'm not too concerned about noise, was figuring I'd just go with Tom DeWitt's approach. But I'm not really looking for yet another project like replacing the generator with an alternator.
Frankie - I've seen in this and your other posts you use a fan spacer instead of a clutch. This car was originally set up with a flex fan and spacer (no clutch). Is that a six blade stock/oem fan? I bought a 5 blade stock fan, should I try spacer and 6 blade stock?
I'm not concerned with losing a few HP, but don't want to send a fan blade through the hood.
I'm a little late to the party, but I notice from your pictures your generator belt adjustment appears to be all the way to the left side tightened (as viewed from the front) which makes me ask the question : How is the belt tension?? That belt turns the water pump as well and if it's loose would contribute to your overheating problem. Pilot Dan
I think there's plenty of belt tension Pilot Dan. The 30 or so times so far I've installed/removed various parts to the water pump pully I've learned to leave the belt tight until I crack all of the bolts so the pully doesn't move.
Off topic, what do you pilot? I used to fly GA, but it's gotten so expensive I needed to turn to cheaper hobbies like this one.