Coolant flow

72bluNblu said
Uh-huh. Don't have time to explain it, won't bother to help, just grandstanding. Got it. You know best, everyone else is wrong, including the guys that are designing these engines at the OEM level. Sure. If you were onto something, every OEM would do it, your advice is very specific, dyno's and drag strips. It's not real world either.

I didn't say coolant temperatures and intake air temperatures were completely unrelated. I said that coolant temp was only a one part of a complicated system, and not the most important part. You keep oversimplifying this.

I don't have a race engine. Plenty of cars out there run just fine with Holley 750 double pumpers. The fact that your advice on coolant temperatures is tied directly to your carburetor tuning recommendations should be telling you your advice is not practical for everyone- it's good for its own niche, but applying it to everything is a massive oversimplification. There are a lot of factors that go into engine operating temperature.

It is my experience that people that dismiss out of hand what engineers have to say are people that simply don't understand what the engineers are saying. That is not to say engineers are always right, there are plenty of engineers that have gotten it wrong or get so into the weeds that they lose the real world application. But that doesn't mean that every machine shop owner knows better than the engineers that designed the engine, and you certainly don't.

Again, this is wrongheaded. The thermostat only sets the bottom temperature for the system. Once the thermostat temperature is exceeded and the thermostat opens, it has nothing to do with the cooling system anymore. Obviously you can't set your coolant temp range below the temperature of the thermostat, but it doesn't contribute anything to keeping the engine cold beyond that.

The rest of it is a band aid for an insufficient cooling system. If the rest of your cooling system is up to par you shouldn't have to set your coolant temperature colder just so you can keep the car from overheating. Your cooling system should be able to maintain its set parameters. If it can't that's not a sign of cooling system insufficiency. I've have no issues keeping my car between the cut in/cut out temperatures I programmed my fan controller for, even with stuck in traffic on in 110° weather. And if I maintain any speed above about 25mph for more than a handful of minutes, my coolant temperatures drop below cut in.

This article just further shows that guys that build drag race engines are not the best people to ask about what works best on the street. While those guys may be awesome race engine builders, they're just detuning race engines for street use and maintaining the same approach of tuning for maximum power as the most important aspect. They're clearly not used to being able to put together an adequate cooling system. For a race engine that makes sense, for a street engine it's silly. Put together a better cooling system and you don't have to run cold just to prevent overheating.

See, look, you do understand that there's actually more to it and a blanket "never get these engines hotter than 180°" is too dramatically oversimplified to be good advice for every build out there.

If I was going to use a 6 pack I would do the carbs and intake so I could run cooler temperatures. Chrysler took the easy way out (and cheaper way) to crutch a horrible (but money maker) package.

Im not bound by their rules and budgets.

As for me taking engineers out of hand (or whatever turn of phrase you used) I don’t. But I don’t swallow everything thing say as the be all, end all.

I get the thermodynamic part of it. As I said before and I say again, you can’t just make a blanket statement that all engines run good with hot coolant and all engines run poorly with cold(er) coolant.

Im saying that 180 is all the hotter they SHOULD be IF you give a **** about performance.

I offered to make a video but you said I don’t need to because the engineers have it nailed.

You are correct. I dont have the time to personally hand hold you through the process. Unless you want to pay me. And I still may not do it because you seem like the type who would argue continually, call every slap dick you know and some you don’t to arm yourself to argue and I don’t have time for that ****.

Ive already wasted more than enough time on this thread (and others) trying to get more people to understand that you don’t (and shouldn’t) need coolant temperatures over 180 and 160 if you like performance but it’s the same **** every time. The engineers say…the do it that way. I don’t give a single **** if you aren’t willing to learn that there may be a better way (there is) to do it. I’m not the only one saying or doing it.

Its 2023. This isn’t new. I learned this in the early 1980’s. And it still works today.

Make sure you never question your paradigms. That’s a sure way to never moving forward.

And for the record, I’m not talking about maximum horsepower. I’m talking about day to day driveabilty. You have the “race” and “max power” issue. That’s a YOU problem. I’m talking about STREET ******* CARS.