VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 Over heating on 32 confederate

I met an old timer (older than me I'm 76 ) who works on old chevs.
He told me how he solves the problem.
He says the water goes through the radiator to fast to cool it. What he has done for years is to reduce the dia. of the radiator hose to 1/2 inch dia.
I took a 1 inch copper coupling and soldered a 1/2 inch reducer to it and put it in the hose. I have run the car about 20 min. at fast idle and it did not get hot. If it quits raining I wiil do a road test and see what happens.
Buckeye

The water going trough the radiator too fast theory is a fable. The "solution" of putting a restriction in the outlet from the engine partially corrects the problem of sucking air into the coolant. What it does is restrict the flow thereby increasing the pressure in the engine cooling passages. That reduces the size of any air bubbles that reduce the heat transfer from the engine and result in coolant loss via the overflow tube.

The true solution is to eliminate the air being drawn past the water pump impeller shaft or a loose hose on the inlet side of the pump or hole in a hose. Yes it may be small enough leak so coolant does not leak out but air is still drawn in. I recently had that happen on a '70 Caprice even with its 16 psig radiator cap.

Foaming antifreeze is another indication of air being drawn into the coolant and will result in lower heat transfer from engine.

Thanks for the input.
I have installed a new waterpumo and all new hoses and it still gets hot after running about an hour. If you only go 4 or 5 miles it stays at normal.
When you get into stop and go traffic is starts to heat up. I will let you know it the restriction in the hose works.
Buckeye

I'm no one to disagree with Chipper BUT! Years back when we were putting big engines in light weight bodied cars we sometimes would restrict flow to run cooler. As for theory I can't say. But, it worked more than once. Still scratching my head! Al W.

The best way to check your theory is to use an infrared thermometer to scan the temperature gradiants of your system.

Al,
Actually there is a case where too much flow through the radiator is a factor. It is when the flow rate from an unthrottled water pump exceeds the capacity of the radiator tubes and produces laminar flow with an effectively insulating layer next to the metal of the radiator. It is extremely rare and non existent in engineered systems. Even with much higher flow rates than the radiator is designed to handle the restriction of the tube openings tends to still produce reasonable flow rates and designed heat transfer from the hot coolant to radiator to air.

Al, The above presented to protect the finger nails, scalp and your sanity. It is not to imply that any typical automotive application should ever experience a condition where an additional restriction is necessary. BTW that is in lesson 501, a graduate level course.

Car over heated after 2 miles,but I may have found the problem. In the radiator hose is what looks like a housing that has a butterfly flap in it. It sends water to the heater. The flap is very stiff. Does this flap open by flow pressure or by heat? I removed the thermostat and drove 8 miles before it started to get hot, but it didn't boil. I think that I will remove the device ( the heater valve/)and see if that is the problem. Will let everyone know the outcome.
Buckeye

Have no clue on how the device works. It is best to remove anything that could possibly cause your problem. Do it one at a time so you know what caused the problem. That way you might be able to put the other stuff back on later.

Ifound the problem. the heater control valve that sets in the radiator hose has a flapper in that is heat actived, it acts just like a thermostat. when the engine is cold the flap stays closed, allowing a minimum of water to flow around it.At temperature it is supposed to open and allow full flow of the water.
In my case I found that it was only opening about 1/4 of the full opening.After removing it the car runs at a normal temperature.
Buckeye

I have found the more extra crap that is added the more problems are created. KISS is the byword.

Larry Jackson wrote an article in October 1987 for the G&D that describes a way to improve the efficiency of the water pump. You can find this in the Members Resource Center by searching for "pump". In that article was the following paragraph: