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1) I Think you really need a shroud.
2) Double check your idle/ low speed timing, it may be too retarded.
These are usually the primary reasons to overheat at idle, when you are OK at cruise speed.
You have enough radiator, but not enough airflow, and/or the fuel is burning too far after top dead center. It can't put its heat into the expansion of the gas, so the heat goes into the cylinder walls.
G'day please excuse my noob questions. I'm very new to this and self teaching as I go. My stroker has a overheating problem, coolant pissing out of the radiator catch can (overflow) vent. The car has a msd ignition so timing isn't the issue. I have recently installed a Tstat 180, upgraded my fan to a 16" SPAL, flushed all coolant and reset. These steps have significantly improved the time frame of overheating between start up and until the catch can vent goes off at idle. As one can expect the vent goes off in both idle and stop start traffic. Could I just have a faulty catch can? There are no cracks or leaks on either the rad or catch can overflow. My apologies if my question is silly. I'm very new to this and self teaching myself so my son doesn't have to go through this pain when he's older!
Omfg I think I worked it out. My dang electric water pump is dead!
Was it not pumping enough or not coming on at all?
What kind of car is that stop holding out!! lol
Haggar is right on the money....total, inital timing has a lot to do with heat.
Dealing with that now...lean idle circuit it promotes having to gauge watch.
Fwiw noticed very little difference using a shroud vs not.
Do you have an air dam under the car/core support to help direct air up?
Put a regular ol water pump on it, no high flow..should be just fine.
Assuming there is nothing hindering air flow to the radiator and the fans are blowing in the right direction, I would lean towards the water pump and thermostat. Then I would watch the coolant versus the oil temps. If the oil temps are too high, the coolant cannot keep the engine temp down. In such case I would install a Permacool oil filter relocation (and even an oil cooler) to allow more oil capacity and get the oil filter away from the hot side of the car.
FYI: Since I did all this, my oil barely gets to 215 degrees so I have to be careful of being too cold when on the track.
It will also pull air as much air as it can from the area of least resistance, which is NOT through the radiator, but along the edges. So once again, to reinforce the statement that I quoted, it needs a proper shroud to create the vacuum effect.
I agree you need a real fan and a good shroud, the shroud should cover the whole radiator and the fan needs to move a significant amount of air. That fan is not even pulling air through all of the tubes on the radiator so when you are stopped in traffic some of the water is not really being cooled and some of the tubes are only seeing a little airflow.
