Reply to "Checking the water temperature"

Jim,

My radiator was shot to begin with, but I feel buying the Fluidyne was worth it. ($450 for just the radiator--no connectors, no sensors) I also bought the series 210 Flex-a-Lite fans, which has a shroud that covers the entire radiator. I laid the radiator forward about 3.5" and placed the fans on the backside. I also used the rheostat that came with the fans to control them. I hooked it and the supplied fuse directly to the battery so the fans will still run for a while when the car is shut off. They will run for about 3 minutes, then shut down when the temperature gets below a certain point. With all that done, the car still ran too hot until I took the advice of another Pantera owner. This is what he did and I just blindly took his advice: I blocked the bypass hole in the block just below the thermostat with a freeze plug, then replaced the stock 192deg Ford thermostat with a small block Chevy 160deg thermostat. That modification made a world of difference. As everyone knows, the engine runs hot to begin with; so making the thermostat open at 160deg seemed like the correct thing to do. Since I live in South Florida and it's always warm here anyway I figured that I don�t really need to force the cooling fluid through the block before the thermostat opens.

There seems to be a fine line of either slowing down the movement of cooling fluid too much or moving it through the system too fast. Some people have tried to make the water pump go faster and move more fluid, but that may not be a good solution. I tried running my car with no thermostat at all, but that didn't work out too well. The radiator never had a chance to cool the fluid because it was simply circulating too fast. I think I have finally got the right combination and I going to stick with it unless someone gives me some advice not to leave it this way. My car runs at 190 to 200 all the time now. I don't know where you live, but you may not be able to run a 160deg thermostat if it's in a colder part of the country.

Let me know how things work out.

Wes