What’s your deal? I didn’t disagree that drag racers tend to run and tune their cars to run 160-180 at the track. They do and it works. But it’s not reasonable or smart to continuously run a street car like that, especially at the low end of those temperatures.
And if you look at other motorsports, pretty much no one else runs their engines that cold. NASCAR runs their engine temps at 290*F, because air flow and drag is more important. NASCAR is clearly a special case, but so is drag racing.
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And I can tell you that the 340 in my Duster, as it’s tuned, does in fact run much better at 190-200 than it does at 160-180. I actually changed out the thermostat and reprogrammed my electric fan controller to raise the engine operating temperature to keep it between 190-200, previous to that I had been keeping it at 180. And if you go back at my build thread and look at why I ditched my mechanical fan and went electric in the first place it was because the car was running cold, and it wasn’t running as well as it did when it was hotter.
So yeah, I’ve tried it. I’m not gonna say that’s best for everyone or every engine, but 160-180 is a drag race trick, and it doesn’t carry over to the street or many other motorsports.