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9 replies

Clevor remote thermostat options, Stewart water pumps.

J johncMember
Hello,

I am new to the forum and looking for some advice from some more seasoned Pantera owners than myself.

I am based in the UK and have owned my Pantera for a short while now since shipping it over from sunny California.

My Pantera runs a 393 stroker with a Fontana Clevor block. The current setup has no provision for a thermostat and I have found the motor takes longer than I would like to reach operating temperature so I am lookig to re introduce a thermostat into the system. At present both heads feed the system tank directly via jic lines threaded into a Ford Motorsport intake. A two into one thermostat housing would likely be the neatest solution.

While I have the cooling system apart I am also looking at replacing the steel cooling pipes and the radiator which are showing signs of age to reduce the number of dissimilar metals in the system and to best protect the engine for the long term which appears to be a rare gem in itself.

If anyone has any experience to share regarding thermostat set ups it would be much appreciated. Also if anyone has any experience of the Stewart high flow mechanical water pumps with a single pass radiator set up I would like to hear of their experiences.

Many thanks

John
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J jffrMember
quote:
Originally posted by John C:
Hello,

I am new to the forum and looking for some advice from some more seasoned Pantera owners than myself.

I am based in the UK and have owned my Pantera for a short while now since shipping it over from sunny California.

My Pantera runs a 393 stroker with a Fontana Clevor block. The current setup has no provision for a thermostat and I have found the motor takes longer than I would like to reach operating temperature so I am lookig to re introduce a thermostat into the system. At present both heads feed the system tank directly via jic lines threaded into a Ford Motorsport intake. A two into one thermostat housing would likely be the neatest solution.

While I have the cooling system apart I am also looking at replacing the steel cooling pipes and the radiator which are showing signs of age to reduce the number of dissimilar metals in the system and to best protect the engine for the long term which appears to be a rare gem in itself.

If anyone has any experience to share regarding thermostat set ups it would be much appreciated. Also if anyone has any experience of the Stewart high flow mechanical water pumps with a single pass radiator set up I would like to hear of their experiences.

Many thanks

John


I have a custom made remote thermostat on my 388 Fontana. The remote housing is on the cylinder head outlets and located to the right of the passenger side valve cover. Pantera Performance Center in Colorado had this piece custom made.
J johncMember
Thanks for all the replies.

IPSCO have some very nice thermostat options. I like the Idea of a close-able bypass line akin too the factory Cleveland system.

The trick flow also looks like a nice piece of kit and I can see this working well for a front engine application, but it would be nice to be able to access the thermostat from the engine bay in the Pantera.

Can anyone suggest a good location to feed the warm up bypass line and and the header tank feed into the pump inlet when using a 351 Windsor water pump? I suppose I could use the heater port as I will most likely do away with the heater, but the Stuart water pumps I was looking at didn't have the heater ports on them

That is one nice looking intake Anders. I would love to run throttle bodies on mine at some point

John
davidnunndavidnunnMember
John,

Another option is to install one of IPSCO's remote, full bypass, thermostat units (see photo) before the inlet of the radiator, so that during warm-up, coolant flows at its full velocity but simply bypasses the radiator.

You can find an interesting article on the Space City Panteras web site (under Technical Info, written by John Taphorn) about this mod. I went one step further and installed a Stewart electric booster pump just after the radiator's output.

I also have a Stewart stage 4 water pump, which is a work of art next to the Edelbrock pump it replaced.

I'm in the process of installing George P.'s "self-bleeding" coolant tank mods and will definitely report back to let the forum know how well the mods worked. Mind you, the theory behind it is pretty tried and true, so I'm not concerned as to whether or not it will work; I'm just curious to see how much of an improvement it makes.

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bosswrenchbosswrenchMember
There also used to be a Ford/SVO water assembly offered for Cle-vor engines running a dry intake manifold- not just for Fontanas. You sometimes still find these on E-Bay. The Fontana was designed to be a robust racing block so thermostats were not often used. And a few owners adapt a Windsor intake which is a wet manifold that has a built-in thermostat housing.

I intermittently publish a Fontana newsletter with facts & peculiarities in it. Send me a PM & I;'ll add you to the group. There are currently 25 Pantera owners and twice that many Mustangers running Fontanas on the street.
J johncMember
Thank you David for this alternate approach. A stage 4 mechanical pump and a 55 Gal booster that is a lot of pumping going on. Do you run this set up with a single pass radiator and did you run the stage four pump on its own and find it necessary to add the booster pump or did you install everything together?

EMP Stewart kindly sent me flow charts for the stage three and four windsor pumps. The stage 4 flow is certainly impressive.

Regarding George P.'s cooling tank mods, we run this very same combination of swirl pot and header tank on our 2 litre toyota race engine currently putting out about 450hp. The radiator and swirl bleed directly to the header tank, which in turn feeds the water pump inlet. Up to now no cooling problems and this engine gets pushed very hard. I would say it is worth the mods just for the ease of filling and purging air from the system.

John

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