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Break In woes

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Norton47

Jedi Warrior
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We put some more miles on the car, by driving to Vancouver, BC for the All British Field meet.
Wonderful day and what a great bunch of cars.Really beautiful setting in the Botanical garden.

The car woes, Engine Temp. I have a 12 inch electric fan in a puller configuration. I had the radiator boiled out and tested, as was the block when the engine was rebuilt. weather was in the 70's and higher. On the freeway just fine, middle of the temp gauge. Radiator was full and a 50/50 mix of water and antifreeze.
In town with the fan overide on it would just keep it under the 3/4 mark most of the time, the engine idle would get rougher and lower until I had to feather the pedal once in while to keep it going. Twice, the needle crept up just over the 3/4 mark about a needles width, but with movement you could watch it come down immediately.
I really expected better cooling performance as the fan had been a pusher configuration before.
Is a 12 inch fan really enough?
Will the 16 inch fan Dan Masters talks about fix this woe?
What is the opinion on water wetter?

Of course on these type days restarting the car after a short shutdown, such as refueling was interesting also, as the fuel line wants to vapor lock. I had wrapped the fuel line with insulating bubble wrap with a aluminum foil backing, just to see if it would help. We always started but some times it took a lot of cranking, with the throttle wide open,it would sorta of run and be turning over by the starter at the same time then catch at a low rpm and then rev up. This may have been aggravated by having the carbs to rich as when I got to Vancouver they were sooty. More about carb woes in another post. Want to keep this on cooling.

Thanks
 
I've got a friend in the local Triumph club that went through the same thing you are going through. Restored TR3. As part of the restoration, he had the radiator cleaned, boiled out, repaired or whatever they do. He also installed an electric fan and still retained the crank fan. Temps would rise to 3/4 just like you're experiencing. Finally, he bit the bullet and bought a new radiator...end of problem.

Sometimes "cleaning" out the old radiator just doesn't bring it back to it's original state.
 
:iagree:The original radiators have the water tubes running through holes in the fins and only the relative size of the tube and the hole to keep the tube in good thermal contact with the fin.

With time, corrosion, repeated heat cycles and whatever else; eventually the tubes are no longer in good thermal contact with the fins, and cooling ability (thermal efficiency) is dramatically reduced.

However, that will cause overheating at speed, which doesn't appear to be Norton47's problem.

12" may be too small. I ran a 16" and it worked great once I got the radiator recored.

But mixture problems can also be related to overheating problems. My Dad's TR3A had persistent, severe overheating problems until I figured out that the carb jets were worn internally; making them go rich at idle. Since the procedure is to set the mixture at idle, but the adjustment affects the entire range, the net result was that the cruise (and power) mixtures were way too lean.

The hot start problem is becoming much more prevalent these days, due to changes in gasoline formulation. Joe A. sells carb heat shields that help ...
 
Oh yeah, another question is how accurate is the temp gauge ? I've had several of the original mechanical gauges that read way high ...
 
Nort,

I have a 16" puller with my new aluminum radiator and no problems, but there shouldn't be with that setup. I did get the 16", because I had two guys on another forum express their regrets at buying the 12".

And it was also what Wizard Radiator said to do to make sure that it stayed cool, even with the new radiator.
 
Randal
You are correct about gauges. When I first got my car it read high. After talking with my local mechanic, I found out that there were a bunch of wrong resistance sensors out there.
I bought a new one from TRF and installed it and it then read in the middle. The resistance is close to what Dan Masters calls out.
That still leaves the question as to what really is the temperature. To calibrate I could suspend the sender in a can of water and heat it with a accurate thermometer and monitor the resistance and then use a decade box and connect the gauge and see where the needle drives for the various resistances. I may due this with at least 3 data points just to know.
 
Aloha,

I concur with Randall regarding the importance of the fins maintaining good contact with the tubes. The fins are were the heat transfer to the air happens. Not leaking under pressure at temperature is a very important quality in a radiator, but if it can not lower the temperature of the coolant it is just a tank. Here is a offering from Harbor Freight, a non contact in-fared thermometer for about $40 that should accurate enough for home shop use.

https://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=96451

One of these is great for finding out where hot spots are, checking the accuracy of the temperature gauge or the temperature of your adult beverage in the bottle. You should see a significant temperature drop between the top tank of the radiator and the bottom tank. I would guess it should be in the range of 30 to 40 degrees F. Having an other wise solid radiator re cored is usually a lower cost option than buy a new one.
 
I have a 56 TR3 and have tried two original (redone) radiators, one with, one without crank hole. I would still get hot come summer although summer here is unusual.
I finally broke down and put an alluminum rad with the TR6 fan in the car.
Yesterday the temp. was 105 and my car was running about 175. It will only get to 185 if I'm idling in this heat.
I know that ally rads are not supposed to transfer heat as well as the stock but luckily my radiator doesn't know that.
 
I had a new rad. core installed in our'76 TR6,and installed a 16" fan and 160 deg. thermostat. With recent air temps in the 70s the engine temp. holds at the 1st mark off "cold",i.e. one mark to the left of the center mark. During a long idle,it will creep up to the 1st mark to the right of center when the fan cuts in(185deg.thermal switch),and temp comes down fairly quickly.

Tom
 
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