Reply to "Increasing the cooling system pressure?"

Doug,

I would be concerned with the weak link being the 30+ year old heater core behind the dash board.

Food for thought:

The best way to improve the Pantera cooling system is to eliminate restrictions in the cooling system that will improve the flow-rate of the coolant. The second best improvement will be to increase the surface area of the radiator (make it thicker).

An illustration of the magnitude of improvement in coolant flow rate that is needed: the high flow coolant pump sold by Edelbrock is rated for 35 GPM, the coolant pump in the Ford GT is rated for over 100 GPM.

A 1971 Mustang had 1 1/2" hose between the block outlet & the radiator, and 1 3/4" hose between the radiator outlet and the water pump inlet. The Pantera uses 1 3/8" tubing in both directions, and the tubing is 4 or 5 times the length too! The swirl tank and the two pass radiator are also flow restrictions.

A thicker radiator provides more surface area for heat transfer, but the thickness of the radiator also resitricts air flow more. Some core designs restrict air flow worse than others, the worse design is the core of the stock FIAMM radiator. The radiator I had built by Evans for 6018 has two rows of 1 1/2" wide tubes and is a single pass design, it was designed to restrict coolant flow as little as possible. This core design is also less restrictive to air flow.

Happy New Year,

George