I recently rebuilt my engine and made some modifications to the cooling system which I will share with you. I will post each part on different threads so that you can comment on each part. The background to this is that the needle has always been vertical on the gauge since I have owned the car (1982) until last year when it started to climb towards the 3/4 mark on occasions. I flushed it out, changed the thermostat and temp sender unit all to no avail so decided to investigate, the result is that it now reads just left of centre but I do not know which mods made the difference as they were all done at once.
I started by putting a 74degree stat in, but that made no difference because as the engine got hotter it just meant that the stat opened earlier and the temp still rose to it's achieved level. One thing to bear in mind here is that whatever stat you put in will be the min that the engine will run at, so there is no point in putting a 88degree stat in and trying to get the temp lower than that on a hot day. I eventually settled for an 82 degree stat which will give me a bit of leeway.
I then got the rad checked out and had a couple of tappings put in for elec fan thermo-switch and a spare. The rad people quoted me £30 for the 2 tappings but said that they had an improve mattrix that they can fit, I argued that it had to be a 4 row but the guy insisted that he had a 3 row of the same thickness with more tubes in, which I settled for in the end as we made a deal in so much that the cost was £129 plus V.A.T. for the new core and £30 for the tappings, on the promise that I could forward more work to him via the S.O.C. We ended up with a total cost of £109 plus V.A.T. and the tappings thrown in. He will honour this price to all S.O.C. members now. I'll finish this part with the rad pics
Bob
Old core
I started by putting a 74degree stat in, but that made no difference because as the engine got hotter it just meant that the stat opened earlier and the temp still rose to it's achieved level. One thing to bear in mind here is that whatever stat you put in will be the min that the engine will run at, so there is no point in putting a 88degree stat in and trying to get the temp lower than that on a hot day. I eventually settled for an 82 degree stat which will give me a bit of leeway.
I then got the rad checked out and had a couple of tappings put in for elec fan thermo-switch and a spare. The rad people quoted me £30 for the 2 tappings but said that they had an improve mattrix that they can fit, I argued that it had to be a 4 row but the guy insisted that he had a 3 row of the same thickness with more tubes in, which I settled for in the end as we made a deal in so much that the cost was £129 plus V.A.T. for the new core and £30 for the tappings, on the promise that I could forward more work to him via the S.O.C. We ended up with a total cost of £109 plus V.A.T. and the tappings thrown in. He will honour this price to all S.O.C. members now. I'll finish this part with the rad pics
Bob
Old core
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