ok so iv tired it all

88 c4 with brand new afr 180 heads - new water pump new thermostat 160 degree

also thermo master chip

car is running close to 230 after driving it a bit -

everything seems good flow is good cant figure out why its funning out and dont wanna blow my new heads -

from what iv read betweet 180 and 200 is normal operating temp

so am i wrong in my setup or what should i be looking into cause im lots

both fans work and come on at 190

thanks all

while in park in the driveway it sits around 205 but when i put it in drive and sit in my driveway the temp keeps climbing and after 230 i shut it off

 

so no c4 pros in here have a clue ?

 

Not going to say I'm an expert but I can tell you my experiences with my 88 vert that ran hot.

My 88 ran hot until I removed the radiator and gave her a good cleaning, not to mention removing the foot deep of leaves, paper, hot dog wrappers, small rodent carcass, etc from in front of it. That couple inch gap sucks up and stores alot of road debris. If you haven't done that, that would be the first thing I'd do. Couple hours in a lawn chair, 6 pack of beer, small blade screwdriver and a gentle brush is how I handled it. Of course you could just buy a new radiator, couple $hundred for OEM to $500 for the nicer models.

FSM says to check the following if overheating:

-Retarded timing could cause the car to overheat.
-Bad Computer Command Control System could retard the timing
- Belt tension too low
- Reservoir hose pinched or kinked, especially near the fill neck
- Coolant fan inop
- Core has blocked passages either through damage or corrosion.
- Radiator fins obstructed by bent fins or trash (my issue above)


There is a coolant temp sensor just below the intake plenum. It could 'possibly' be indicating a erroneous condition.

Good luck to you.....and please, be sure to post your solution so the rest of us can learn from your experience.

 

And to add that if it is an original radiator, being 20+ years old means it is going to be trashed inside.

But check everything in the list above...and if you have access to an IR pyrometer use it on the hoses to read what the actual temperatures are.

I'll bet the radiator is shot...

 

Good points here, especially the part about cleaning debris from around the radiator. The A/C condenser can also be clogged up and won
t allow air to go thru it and then to the radiator.

If the car has high miles and the radiator is original, it's possible that the tubes have become so thin from years of coolant going thru them that they can no longer provide enough heat transfer.

Have you replaced the radiator hoses, especially the lower one? It's possible that the lower hose is collapsing or is partially clogged and that will restrict water flow.

Check the belt tensioner to make sure it's holding the serp belt tenson properly. One quick way to test the tension is to turn the steering quickly with the engine at idle. A groan or squeal usually is an indication of a belt not in good tension or a slipping belt. The W/P is driven by the back (smooth) side of the belt so there may be slippage. Can you easily turn the W/P pulley with the engine off?

 

 

I have a 160 degree thermostat and my car runs at about 170 - 180 normally. 165 - 170 in the winter when the car is moving.

Sitting in traffic in ANY season and the car will slowly go up to 224 when the main fan comes on. Main fan goes off at 212. Once I get moving again, the car settles down in the 180 - 190 range in summer.

My temps went down a full 10 - 15 degrees once I cleaned out the radiator debris and added a new A/C condenser (25% of the fins on my old condenser were bent and restricting airflow).

Use the attached guide to clean out your cooling system.



PS - if after cleaning your cooling system, you are still running hot, check for clogged catalytic converter(s)

 

well i gave the front of the radiator a good lookever and yea most of the left side is all bent fins

i got a new one a oem replacement for now , if this does fix my problem then ill buy a all aluminum fancy one -

but for now just to see if its really the prolem i got one from autozone for 90 bucks -

pray for me lol

ill keep yall updated

 

I went with a Ron Davis 4-core with the integral cooler (for an automatic)...

I got a Canton sandwich plate for the oil filter and plumbed it to the radiator with -8 lines for my oil cooler.

Oil temps stay below 180 most of the time...and my water temps never usually go above 225. It usually stays around 185-190 when in traffic and only gets to 230 when I'm doing 20 minute lapping sessions in the summer here in Texas.

Cut the end tank off the old one and look at the coolant tubes when you get the new one installed and operating. Take a picture and post it up...I'll bet your eyes will

 

I wouldn't plumb an oil cooler with anything smaller than #10AN lines and #12 is often preferred. Just make sure you have good oil pressure. Those lines aren't very large and I'd hate to see you spin a bearing from starvation.

 

You might be right...I don't exactly recall the size.

They might be #10AN...could be #12AN. I'd have to look when it's up on the lift.

All I know is they are NOT small...I can fit my pinkie into the fittings. The OD on the elbow is 5/8"



And they are DIRTY right now...yuck! We just had 1.4 miles of road back to our place repaired/paved and driving through the road base when it was wet to do data captures for the tune killed all the hard work I did cleaning all that crap up over the winter.

The #8AN stuff I think is from the hard lines to the regulators for my air supply in the shop...

 

Ok so i pulled out the radiator and condensor - the radiator looks to be in perfect shape however the fins on the condensor are all messed up looking -

so if i replace the condensor could this solve my problem ?

 

It sounds like the bent fins are keeping air from passing thru and on to the radiator.

Of course you need the condenser if you wan to keep the A/C. Parts stores sell a "comb" for straightening the fins. Just pass the comb along the fins and they will straighten out. The fins are very light aluminum so it's easy to break them; just go easy.

The condenser can be removed. You need to evacuate the A/C system, remove the two A/C hoses, the accumulator, the bracket it sits in, and loosen the upper radiator shroud (lots of small screws!). Also loosen and pull back the PS reservoir.

Pull the upper radiator housing back towards the engine and downwards. The condenser can be lifted upwards from the right and pulled out.

 

Let's go back to basics. What caused you to put the heads and water pump on the car? Was it overheating before the changes were made? Or did you upgrade the heads and now it's overheating? I'd think it could be quite lean with those heads and a thermomaster chip (the chips tend to lean out the cars a little since the factory tends to set them up rich, at least that's the typical change on the speed density cars). But I wouldn't expect to see it overheat at idle. If you remove the radiator cap (with the engine cold, don't get burned) and start the car, are you seeing water flowing through the system?

 

the radiator i just had tested and its good -

i replaced the heats cause out of no where i started having a temp issue then that lead to head gasket leak - pulled heads they were old from 1990-
bought new afr heads - new everything - still having the temp issue

nw the weird thing, car was running great - and ran around 180 -

i had it at a performance shop and they replaced the iac and cleaned out the throttle body and and adjusted the timing , well it wasnt ever 50 miles after i got it back from them, im stitting in my driveway with blown heads - i just noticed that looking at the maintanice history today

but with all new parts i still have this temp issue

 

Ok. A few things to start.

How did you set the timing? Did you unplug the connector that removes the computer control from the distributor and then set the timing? If you set it with the timing connector connected your timing could be retarded a considerable amount and that can cause overheating issues.

Have you changed fuel filters recently (or ever)? Or, do you have a fuel pressure gauge to see what the fuel pressure is with the car running (with and without the vacuum line connected to the fuel pressure regulator). Make sure the fuel pressure increases when the vacuum line is removed. If you have a clogged fuel filter (or a fuel pump that's going bad) the pressure will likely drop as the engine is revved due to fuel starvation. This can cause overheating.

How do the spark plugs look? If you have a clogged injector (or a couple) you should see a couple plugs that look really lean. They will typically have a white "ashy" color and not the tan to brown we normally see. I'd take a look at all the spark plugs and see how they look.

Stuck thermostat. I'd consider removing the thermostat and seeing if this corrects the issue. At this point it doesn't seem likely, but I wouldn't leave anything to chance at this point. Just remove it and put the water neck back on with a gasket and see if it still overheats.

Does the car still have cats in the exhaust? A plugged cat can cause overheating issues. You can typically see that by hooking a vacuum gauge up to the intake. As you rev the engine vacuum should drop slightly. If it suddenly goes to minimal vacuum and the throttle isn't wide open, that's a sign of a closed cat (google "diagnosing a bad catyletic converter with a vacuum gauge" and you should find a good write up on it).

You already verified that you didn't accidentally get a standard rotation water pump, correct?

And a compression test couldn't hurt. What chamber size heads did you purchase?

 

everything is new - i mean everything - i was just gonna hook the radioator back up with out the condensor installed and see if it still overheats -

 

Injectors, cats and everything are new?

Pull the thermostat and replace it. You might have a bad one (and they are cheap). The other thing you can do to see if it's really a problem with restricted airflow to the radiator is to start the car and spray the radiator with a garden hose. The water running over the radiator will cool it and that should keep it from overheating as long as you're keeping it wet with cool water. If it still gets hot, you have a water flow issue or a blockage in the system (intake gaskets with the water passages blocked off, a standard flow water pump, stuck thermostat, air in the system).

Or, the tune is massively off and it's running super lean (I'd still look at a spark plug or two to see what color they are).

 

Verify the dash with a scan. It should be within a degree or two of the Coolant Temp Sensor.

From the factory, it would cruise around the thermostat - 195 and at idle and low speed it would have run up to the threshold for the Main Fan, 226, which would then run for about 60 seconds and drop the temp before the fan turned off. It would then go back to 226 and the process would repeat. UNLESS, you had the a/c on and then it starts controlling the temp of the liquid it's making in the Condensor, on average 100 degrees regardless of how long the engine's been running. The fan will come on sooner, run longer and low speed coolant temps will be 10 to 15 degrees less as it has to manage condensor temp to keep it from blowing a hole in the hood.

Anyway, if you're seeing these higher temps at cruise and the gage is accurate, I'd guess an air flow problem - Shroud, which is often damaged when you try to wedge in something that isn't OEM, or the
Spoiler. If it's a low speed/idle situation, then without more capacity, it should reach the factory threshold (eventually) because a lower thermostat does nothing to increase the amount of liquid that's available to cool it down.

Assuming those parts are intact, then checking compression and doing a leakdown test would be in order. If the deck wasn't square when you did the heads, no gasket is going to keep those heads sealed to the block.

 

ok so took out condensor - radiator is good , hooked up radiator without condensor and ran it same thing - when its in park and idles it hoevers around 200 - 205

when i put it in drive it climbs to 225 and i get worried and shut it off

when im driving it - sometimes it rises and sometimes it lowers while driving

never seems to be steady unless its in park

now i did check into this and wanted yall opinion

when these new afr heads when on i used the 1
felpro 1003 head gaskets like they recommend

however i used the stock felpro intake manifold gaskets that have the restricted rear portion blocked off

now i see they do make a felpro 1256 intake manifold gasket set that does not have the rear restriction

should i get these and put them on or would this not make any difference for my high temp problem ??

thanks all