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Engine Cooling - yes i searched

fluidmotion

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Tigard, Or
so i already have a lot of the normal upgrades, HD CSF 3 core radiator, 180* t-stat, hi flow water pump, electric cooling fan (2950 cfm), stock aux fan on a manual switch, even hood vents for when im at idle or moving very slow. the twist to my problem is i have a 4.6 stroker at about 9.75:1. so when its warm out it likes to run warm. doing about 70 mph down the freeway my temps were running up to 220 and i would have to turn my heat on to bring the temps down and thats just no fun when its like 90* outside. also it would want to over heat when i was wheeling which sucks. now i know the motor was designed to run at 190-220 but i like it to run cooler than that.

i would like it to run steady around 180 in the warm temps. ive been reading up on the forums an stuff on oil coolers. i was looking at the perma cool oil filter kit (this one) would an oil cooler make a big enough difference. a lot of the people that i read that used them said it did for them but that was on different motors. anyone have any opinions or insight?
 
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I've also heard (especially if you have an AW4 tranny) that if you run a separate tranny cooler (instead of the one through the radiator), it helps...I know the AW4 runs pretty warm.

What about switching to a synthetic like Amsoil? might save you a few degrees...so might a bottle of Royal Purple "Purple Ice" in your radiator....

out of curiosity, what electric cooling fan are you running that pulls 2950 cfm??? that's just awesome....
 
Not that i know anything but ive heard that you should run a stock thermostat and not another one. Even if its lower temp it ends up raising it. Try looking on gojeeps page, he just posted some stuff about restricting his radiator hose and in doing so caused the temps to go down as to the water was sitting in the radiator longer. Worth a try cause its free and cheap thing to try. Also your after market fan may actually be not pulling what it says, had one i got for my dads bronco and it totally sucked but was supposed to be "high cfm electric" the stock steel fan hooked back up worked better.
 
I run a hi-flow water pump, 3 core radiator, 180 t-stat, 60/40 water to AF and some Purple Ice....and my temps stay around 185-190......stock fans....auxillary tranny cooler inline with radiator, synthetic fluids, and I'm in the New Mexico heat...and a hypertech programmer...
 
The 2950 cfm fan is probably one of the PermaCool models. Summit sells them. I've got the 14" one rated at that. I don't believe it's actually putting that much out. The stock Aux electric fan (it's a '96) feels like it pulls more air than the PermaCool. Maybe there's a different way to measure it. Velocity of air X area? bigger area so even though it's lower velocity it's still pulling more than the smaller area and higher velocity of the stock aux fan? Each fan has it's own relay to the battery so I don't think lack of juice is the problem.

You may want to consider, as an experiment, switching back to the clutch fan and see if it makes a difference.

You didn't mention what thermostat but the Mr. Gasket ones from Summit (referenced on GoJeep's site here: http://www.go.jeep-xj.info/HowtoWaterpump.htm) appear to be superior to the standard "spring" driven kind and I'll probably change mine before the heat really sets in here. Just my opinion but I'll staying with the stock 195 degree thermostat and be happy if it stays at 210.
 
well i should of put that i have a seperate tranny cooler and i by passd the radiator. but the problem is the stroker generates more heat. it would run cooler for a little while right after oil changes which makes me think that an oil cooler would help me out a lot. i had the same set up before the stroker and i would run 180 all day long no mater what i was doin, if the temps started to rise i could just flip the aux fan on and keep it constant.


JNickel101 said:
out of curiosity, what electric cooling fan are you running that pulls 2950 cfm??? that's just awesome....
its a perma cool one and its a little on the spendy side but here
http://store.summitracing.com/partd...t=PRM-19114&N=700+4294838842+115&autoview=sku
 
I'm running the same Perma-Cool fan. I purchased a Flex-a-Lite temp control that mounts under the hood and allows you to control when the fan turns on. I haven't had any cooling issues to date. I also allow the fan to run after the engine has been turned off to ensure proper cooling, although i do run a Deka Intimidator Deep Cycle battery for power insurance. The Perma-Cool will hold a sheet paper to the outside of the grill when it's running, so it does have alot of CFM's. HTH
 
yeah i never had one single problem with my motor was stock. everything i did made it run nice and cool. the reason for my problem now is because the stroker creates more heat than the motor did stock. basically my question is; Will an oil cooler help lower engine temps?
 
An oil cooler may help some, but if you are having to turn the heater on driving at 70mph it won't help a whole lot.
Was the motor punched or just stroked? If it was punched at all this could be the problem as you this takes metal from between the heat source and the coolant which means the heat travels faster to the coolant and the coolants heating faster and not getting enough time to cool before the t-stat opens sending it back to the heat source.
Your best bet will probably be to go with: 1: a much larger rager radiator 2: Oil cooler 3: seperate trans cooler .... ie, all three. Even at that you may have to try different size water pump pulley sizes to change the amount of water passed through the pump. I have done all of these with race engines to get to cool properly.
As for the radiator, get the biggest one you can stuff in there, more coolant will mean more time it takes to heat it up and longer cooling times. I am not sure if it will fit but a radiator for a full size Chevy, Dodge or Ford truck with 4 core should help a lot. I usually try and use a Chevy 4 core from a 78-79 full size Blazer or PU. On one recent 4x4 we stuck the radiator on the rollbar down tubes similar to the race trucks in order to keep the 383 stroker motor cool. It also has an oil cooler.

JS
 
im not exactly sure what you mean by punched but im guessing you mean if the cyliders were overbored and yes they were. if im correct then what you are saying make perfect sense. i did install a high flow water pump when i did the stroker but as i feared, the radiator is not rated to handle my cooling needs. the only problem i run into with the larger radiator is space to fit one. i will have to research the larger radiators and see what i would be able to fit with the small amount of space i have. thanks for the imput JS4309
 
Yup, when you bore (punch) an engine it takes metal away that helped cooling so now you have to increase the coolant to compensate. Some engines don't require much but others require 2 to 3 times as much. I know one person who ended up having a radiator built that could handle the engines high coolant needs.
You could possibly do some redesingning and custom install the radiator at an angle. On one we added two large heater cores with electric fans and that was enough to fix the overheating issues. One didn't do it though. It was a fairly cheap fix when space was limited. It wasn't cheap though as we used braided steel lines as we had a fairly long run. I added one to my 69 GTO Judge and that took care of it's heating issues.
You don't want to overcool an engine though either as they will not run efficiently.

JS
 
You could be suffering too much flow as there is not enough drop across your radiator. I have much more but had to run a restrictor to increase block pressure to stop the coolant boiling off the cylinders and slow the flow through the radiator so there was enough time to exchange the heat.
See my thread. http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=915594
Also go back to a 195* thermostat as you are not helping things at all by running a 180. You are getting far more engine wear and running rich all the time due to being in open loop mode. A cooler thermostat does NOT stop a engine from overheating. If you are producing more heat than the radiator can remove, ( both the 180 and 195 thermostats would be fully open ) it will still rise to the same exact temperature no matter what temp it started from.
 
JS4309 said:
Yup, when you bore (punch) an engine it takes metal away that helped cooling so now you have to increase the coolant to compensate. Some engines don't require much but others require 2 to 3 times as much. I know one person who ended up having a radiator built that could handle the engines high coolant needs.
You could possibly do some redesingning and custom install the radiator at an angle. On one we added two large heater cores with electric fans and that was enough to fix the overheating issues. One didn't do it though. It was a fairly cheap fix when space was limited. It wasn't cheap though as we used braided steel lines as we had a fairly long run. I added one to my 69 GTO Judge and that took care of it's heating issues.
You don't want to overcool an engine though either as they will not run efficiently.

JS

yeah i did some searching on radiators last night on summit. very few of those 4 core ones came with the inlet on the passanger side and outlet on the drivers. from the looks of it though by going with something that much bigger it will give me room on the sides of the radiator but i will have to figure out how to add roughly 7-8 inches downward to fit it. if i take out the condensor im thinking i could be able to design a box type deal into the front crossmember to accomidate the larger radiator and still maintain strength, even increase strength there if i make sure to plan things correctly.

GoJeep - i will look into what you are saying but since there is a whole lot of things i need to get done on my jeep and they are preventing me from taking it wheelin, i may just ride it out and go with the larger radiator unless the jeep just ends up getting mad at me here in a couple of months when it gets hotter.
 
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