duct your radiator next time damn it.

 

Yeah I imagine I will do that when I take everything out.

 

You have to duct it or it won't work on the track when you learn to drive like a man. Buy a roll of plastic from speedway and a bunch of rivets, thank me later. I'll take detailed pics of my oil cooler set-up if you promise to play handball with me.

 

In fairness, by "power plants" I suspect he was talking about commercial power generation or some other industrial application.

That said, removal of the thermostat is indeed evil. Yes, it will increase the rate of flow through the system. But removing that restriction also takes away the key element which causes the coolant pressure within the engine itself to run 1 or 2 atmospheres above the coolant pressure in the radiator, and this increase in pressure does increase the boiling point of the coolant within the engine, which retards the nucleate boiling process.

 

Good info here, never thought of it that way.

 

Thats why you gut it instead (great explanation btw Joe! prop ). Get ducting first, thats wayy more important than maximizing flow.

 

It has everything to do with flow, of air through the fins of the rad

As with the powerplant example, there is little use to increase the flow on only one side of the heat transfer, especially if the flow on the other side is the one that needs fixing first.

Does anyone know what the pressure difference over the Tstat is at high (but non-cavitating) revs?
Just curious of how much higher the pressure is in the head compared to the rad cap.

 

I spent 2 days under my car - bumper removed - to do a proper ducting...

Before that, I tried everything I could think of to get the car to cool off - it would cruise at 215* easy at 80mph, I was cycling the A/C off so that it wouldn't go above 235*

Now that everything is sealed up, I'm willing to bet that my ~160* thermostat is very rarely full-open. On a 95* day, at 80mph, with the A/C on full blast, I think I was able to get the water temp up to 192* once. I realize it's not track driving, but compare the before-after of doing a proper duct job with that...

 

Ducting the radiator is much more important than a gutted thermostat. I am not sure what you are trying to say.

 

Just that, nothing more, nothing less.

 

Speedway has it for sale right now. Just bought a roll.

 

Speedway? Link to sight please

 

http://www.speedwaymotors.com/Garage...eet,35873.html I guess.

 

would removing the AC condenser have an effect? Seems like it should increase the amount of air that the radiator sees by a good amount, what with all the bent fins that they all must have by now.

 

Massive effect.

FYI, removing the thermostat is not a good idea. The pressure gradient produced across the thermostat is what moves water through the system. I run a gutted thermostat in Theseus, so you can do that if you want, but don't just remove it.