170 Thermostat?

slantsixdan said

I heard there's three million dollars in 1943 steel pennies hidden behind the ice cube trays in my freezer. Unfortunately for me, that story is just as much horsepuckey as the one you heard about the (imaginary) maximum or "red line" of 200°.

A 170° thermstat is probably not optimal. You might want to read this.

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I read some of that, and it’s just not true that higher coolant temps make more power.

Again, if you want to control the wear, keep the oil clean and all that, you have to correct the tune up. Every engine I tune with lower coolant temps makes more power and they don’t wear out, and, as a general rule they take a LEANER tune up.

Most guys run their stuff too rich to begin with, and then the lower the coolant temp. Now it’s even fatter than it was before.

The other thing about lowering coolant temps is you can run more compression, especially on pump gas.

I’m hoping to fire a true 12:1 pump gas engine tomorrow, with a tunnel ram. It’s mostly for street use. This will be the highest CR on pump gas I’ve done. I was going to build my engine first to make sure I can do it, but the guy trusts that I can do it (probably not a good idea to trust me, but God hates a coward and he is on board with it) so we will see if it can be done.

I damn sure know it won’t happen with 190 or higher coolant temps.