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Running Cooler Now.

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blkcorvair

Jedi Knight
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Better day today as I took some time to fiddle with getting this thing to run cooler. Cut the coolant to about 10% antifreeze and added 6oz water wetter (Red line) made a heat shield for the carb (Two layers as you recomended Nial) Aluminum I had on hand is a bit thin but dissapates heat real fast, can touch it seconds after shutting it down. Also stole your dryer hoes cool air supply idea there with some scraps I had in the attic. Ran it a bit tonite, stayed just under 180 deg. the whole time, no problems with flooding or running too rich. Probably will still wrap the header next week sometime.
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Looks nice--but my only concern is the plan to wrap the headers. I wonder if this is a good idea. They need a certain amount of air flow to keep from getting too hot--so wrapping them will eliminate this. It actually will hurt engine cooling, at least a little, not improve it; but, of course, it will help keep the carbs from getting too hot, if that's a problem. Better would be to add insulation between the carbs and header, I think. My bugeye has an electric fan, which not only helps cool the radiator, but increases air flow through the engine. That's the kind of thing I think is best, if you need to improve the engine cooling.

Also--sorry if I'm not familiar with the 1500s, but shouldn't there be an insulating block between the carb and the manifold? (The earlier spridgets have them.) This could help quite a bit in minimizing carb heating.
 
Wow! Looking real nice. Glad it's running cooler. 180 should be fine.

The big concern I've heard with the header wrap is that is causes burn-through in the headers. But I've had my cheesy Pacesetter headers wrapped for about 5 years with no issues.

Your car looks like it's almost *there* in terms of being finished (but are they ever truly finished?)
Have you thought of running an autocross with it? That would be a simple, low cost "shakedown" (when I built mine, I ran several autocrosses before running at the track...and I still run my Miata in an occasional autocross).

You can get our local northeast USA schedule for autocross here:

https://www.autox4u.com/schedule.htm
 
I have run wrapped headers on my race car for years without any issues, excepte cooler under hood temps. I wouldn't recmmend for a street car, because you're not building the ehat a race will, but for a race car, then by all means. I replaced my header wrap about every 3 or 4 weekends.
 
I would like an insulator b etween the carb but have clearance issues. Literally only have 1/8" left. The shield helps greatly and heat transfer to the carb was my biggest problem. Ill wrap the header next week. I burned a hole through one header but granted I dont know how old it was, it was a cheap knock off and surely the car may have been running lean than.
 
that red motor looks awesome, but the paint looks kinda thick....could that be insulating your engine and causing higher temperatures on the parts attached to the motor? ..z
 
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