cooling issues

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dave.sellers
Posts: 15
Joined: Fri Apr 05, 2013 10:41 am

cooling issues

Post by dave.sellers » Fri Aug 09, 2024 3:29 pm

Hi

I've got a 302 in my Tiger, huge aluminium radiator with kenlowe fan and an oil cooler. I've never had issues in the past, the fan would come on at about 90° and it would hover around there even sitting in traffic in 30° heat.

The car's just finished a major restoration and during the rebuild the mechanic repositioned the oil cooler below the radiator - it had been behind the radiator so this seemed a good idea. He also found that the thermostat was just a plate with a bunch of holes drilled in it so decided to remove that to improve flow.

Unfortunately this hasn't turned out well. The fan now kicks in at about 70° (I can adjust this) but if I'm sitting in traffic on a warm day the temp creeps up towards a 100°. Once I get moving it drops nicely to about 70°.

Discussing this with a local mechanic he said that having no thermostat was a bad idea since the flow would be too fast through the radiator and so wouldn't have chance to be cooled. I'm not a mechanic but this seems logical.

I have a 74° thermostat, would I be better fitting that than having none at all?

Any advice welcome.
Cheers
Dave

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