VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1933-1936 1934 CHEV MASTER ANTI FREEZE

Please could you advise whether anti freeze in the cooling system will cause a 1934 Chev Master to overheat.
I have anti freeze in my cooling system and under normal drivivg conditions the engine is overheating.

Antifreeze will not change the engine temperature but will raise the boiling point. Do not run straight antifreeze,it should be mixed half and half with water.

Do not ever mix anti-freeze products with different formulations as they can coagulate.

One of the more common causes of overheating is air entering past the waterpump seal and causing the coolant to foam. Also when mixing the antifreeze use distilled or bottled water.

I agree!

You probably have rust in the block that has broken loose and is plugging up the tiny passages in the radiator core.

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Things to check:
make sure that you have a thermostat in the system of the correct temperature.

Make sure the radiator cap is holding pressure

Make sure the thermostat is functioning properly. If it is not functioning properly the water will just keep circulating, without the thermostat to keep the water/anitfreeze in the radiator to be cooled by the fan, before releasing it to cool the motor.

Make sure you do not have a cylinder head gasket leak, most easily spotted with white smoke/vapour out tail pipe.

Also look for bubbles in the water/antifreeze at the filler neck area when car is running, this may show a leaking head gasket when engine is at operating temperature.

Cylinder can be isolated by checking to see which spark plug is running pure clean white.

Look at your radiator cap and see if there is a brownish residue underneathe or in the filler neck.

You may have to have the radiator back flushed and the motor also to rid the system of any built up particles and/or blockage.

mike lynch

The 1934 used a non-pressurized cooling system.

I have a 1935 Std Coupe and cooling it has been an ongoing
battle for 37 years. Between talking to engineers (I used to teach at a GM Training Center) and scouring the internet, this
is what I found. Virtually no one ran permanent A-F in the
summer in the 1930's because of the cost. Ethylene-Glycol will
raise the boiling point and act as a rust inhibitor, but it also changes the viscosity and does not dissipate heat as well as plain water. After installing a NOS '36 Cyl Head, water pump,and a 'high efficiency' radiator core, my car would still run almost 200 on a hot day. I drained the anti freeze and filled it with plain water plus about two quarts of anti-freeze to help prevent corrosion and possibly raise the boiling point a little. Road testing it the same day on
the same route brought the temp down to 180. It will climb a
little at a long traffic light, but once under way with some
air flow through the radiator, it cools right back down! It
sure worked for me, so why not give it a try and let us know
how it went?

Seeing as how original poster has not posted anymore on his problem i guess he has either solved it or is continuing to search for the cause of the overheating.

Back in the late 70's my 35 std coupe was always overheating as soon as i slowed down. I had the rad shop block off the top filler and put a 45 degree soldered neck on the inside i could pressurize with a 5 pound cap.
I also changed the thermostat to a 190 degrees. Still wasn;t right.

A friend gave me a 6 blade steel fan at 17 " long off a 383 chrysler motor that was air conditioned and the fan was a NON clutch fan mount. After a lot of filing of the holes to match the early chevy pattern , that immediately solved the problem of overheating.

Then unfortunately one day in late 80's driving down the expressway the large bolt and washer came out of the harmonic balencer, hit the fan at speed putting 2 walnut size dents in my side panels. The worst tho was the balancer came forward on the crankshaft snout and bent the fan in half and ripping my radiator core wide open.

After replacing the radiator core with a new one, i could not find one of those fans again . Even tho there was a 5 digit number stamped into the fan center they could not get me one.

I went to a local speed shop and bought one of those aluminum flexi fans that are supposed to be so wonderful, absolute waste of $$$$, took it off and got the even larger blades with supposedly more cooling ability. Car was overheating at 230 sitting in garage at idle !!! Now i was getting frustrated BIG TIME.

I took the bent steel mopar fan put it in the vice and straightened the 6 blades and installed it back on the car, VOILA, NO MORE OVERHEATING. I was wiping the dust off the paint standing in front of the radiator using a real cloth diapher, i let it straighten out to let the dust fall out and much to my amazement the cloth diaper got sucked towards my grill mesh and held there all on its own at 750 rpm. I repeated this 6 times and each time same result. Temperature was running at a steady 180 degrees ( i also have a 2nd mechanical temp guage hooked up ) .

With my big discovery I take the aluminum big curve fan and re-install it. Cloth diaper falls to the ground each time, zero suction, heat temp goes up to 220 at idle.

Because the fan had been badly bent it would be completely stupid to put that steel fan back on a car, never get it straight and balenced again. So i went to hemmings motor news and placed a wanted ad with a call me collect if you have one, for the 17" long mopar fan with the 5 stamped in numbers. I got a call and bought it from wisconsin i believe.

I set up a couple of saw horses in backyard and whitteled down the end of a wood shaft and rammed it in the water pump mounting center hole and proceeded to paint the fan on both sides with a spray bomb. While slowly spinning the fan on the saw horses to make sure that i have coveered all the primered areas , i could feel the draft from the fan on my hands. I spun it faster and it really was pulling air across my hands............case closed .

vintage air in houston texas USA makes a steel replacement 6 blade fan in 17" long # 32917-VUF with a 2" pitch.....one inch forward pitch to blades and one inch backwards. To run it on your motor you will also need a fan spacer installed about 3/8--1/2" thick so the fan does not hit your rubber fan belt. It will also clear your lower radiator hose too waterpump. You can see the fan at link below but you need an adobe reader program to view it ?

http://www.vintageair.com/catalog11/pg74wc.pdf

I have sat in traffic on really hot humid days and not had a problem : running a pressurised system, running a 180 degree thermostat, running the correct radiator side side air blockers on the side of the rad core bracketry. Seller madmike3434 on ebay USA sells these reproduction at around $20.00 . They block the air from bypassing the radiator core thru the sides. Look where your headlight bars attach on the inside, that is where the blockers fit on 1934-1935 standards,..........no idea on masters .

mike lynch

Thanks to all for the advice.
I have flushed the system today and filled with plain water but still have the overheating problem.
From the input it looks like there are a number of things that could be causing the overheating.
I suspect it may be the head gasket so will start there but will bear the other advice in mind as I progress.

I don't know how much this would help, but one thing I do to determine if a problem is with the flow of coolant , or if the problem is removing heat from the coolant is to simply spray water on the outside of the radiator core and watch for a change. If the temp does'nt decrease, then I suspect a lack of coolant flowing to transfer the heat .

For a possible cylinder head gasket problem.

Look for a spark plug that has the porcelin nice and clean white, thats generally where the water antifreeze mix has been cleaning it and your leak is.

Also check the tail pipe as its running for a telltale white smoke, = antifreeze and water.

Look down the filler tube and watch the water as it flows by and look for air bubbles. Top up the system and get motor up to operating temperature so that the thermostat is allowing the hot water out of the block and into the radiator. Keep watching radiator filler neck until your satisfied it has bubbles or not. ????????

If you can figure out which cylinder is leaking, re torque ****all***** the cylinder head bolts in the correct sequence and too the CORRECT TORQUE...........DO NOT EXCEED factory suggested torque .

Do not over torque the bolts around the suspected cylinder as your going to cause a new set of problems.

mike lynch