cooling problems - 1950 263 in 56R

[Guest n1gzd]

Hi,

I have been trying to solve a cooling problem with my 263. Would a fan like this one help? (my stock one has 4 blades). Would this fan fit. It looks like it would.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1940s-50s...sspagenameZWDVW

My problem is this:

The engine is overheating (especially on hot days) primarily if I just came off the highway). On an average temperature day if I just drive down a road at about 30 mph (not highway) the temperature might get a little past the half way mark on the gauge (ok). However, if I drive on a highway (for example 60 mph) the temperature climbs up and gets pretty warm on the high way, but never red line (perhaps within a needle width of the white hot end of the white stripe in the center of the gauge (3/4 towards red line?). Anyway, if I then come off the high way and get stuck in a traffic jam (even a pretty short one that is a few miles off the highway) then the needle pretty quickly reaches the top of the gauge and the radiator boils over (engine overheat).

I am thinking the following things:

1) it is possible that these engines really never did cool very well and most driving was not on the highway. However, I would have expected that cooling would be find on the highway because there is more wind hitting the radiator. I did send the radiator out to get boiled, flow checked and pressure checked and they said that it was fine.

2) Is it possible that if the radiator efficiency is 10% worse than when the car was new, and the water pump impellors are 10% less effiicient than when the car was new, and if the engine/transmission water jacket passages are 10% more clogged than when the car was new that it would be just enough reduction in cooling that I would have trouble now and then?

3) I should re-check check the timing. If it is too advanced perhaps the engine is running hotter than it should.

4) Would a different fan help? As far as I can tell my car is not supposed to have a shroud. Has anyone ever added one and found that it helps a lot?

5) I think that "back in the day" people used to run straight water in the summer. According to what I have read I might get 30 or 40 degrees cooler if I ran straight water with something like RedLine water wetter in the summer (and then 50/50 in the winter). Were these engines meant to be cooled with water in the summer?

Any other suggestions?

Rebecca

[Guest n1gzd]

Has anyone ever installed a 6v electric fan. I would hate to do that but I am considering all options.

Rebecca

[Mark Shaw]

Rebecca,

I suggest you check the bottom hose to make sure it will not collapse on the suction side of the water pump when running hot.

You should not be able to squeeze the hose enough to make the sides touch each other. Some have springs inside to prevent collapse.

[JohnD1956]

Cleaning the radiator was the right thing to do but without some sort of screen to filter the water coming from the engine, there is a good possibility that debris passed back into the radiator and is now clogging the tops of some of the tubes in the core.

[Guest n1gzd]

I will double check my hose. I am pretty sure it has a spring inside it but I will double check.

If I had a coolant screen where would it go?

Rebecca

[JohnD1956]

The coolant filter would go in the top hose. This presumes the heater return hose goes into the bottom tank of the radiator. There was a discussion on this a while ago and someone suggested using nylon hosiery under the top hose stretched across the top inlet on the radiator. I wonder how that stands up to the hot coolant? The filter I got I had to cut my top hose and insert it between the two halves. It has a stainless steel screen which is accessible through a cap for cleaning. It did take a lot of debris out of my system. That which gets into the radiator through the return heater hose is already in the bottom of the system, so it is of some concern, but not as much as the stuff getting back in the top and clogging the cleaned radiator.

[Matt Harwood]

What you describe is a VERY common problem with these Buicks. The water jackets in the straight-8s fill up with crud over the years. I can almost guarantee that your engine is filled with scale and rust and that it is not getting proper flow to cylinders 6, 7 and 8. It is likely a lot more than 10% diminished--perhaps as much as 40%.

Most of the time, cooling can be vastly improved by the removal of the freeze plugs and using a variety of poking, scraping and digging tools to get as much of the gunk out as possible. Some people report removing as much as 10 pounds of crud from these areas. And it is doubly important to use a filter after you do this--there will be a lot of stuff you can't remove that will have to be flushed out.

The cars cooled fine under all conditions when they were new. They can do it now, too. Band-aids like bigger fans and electric fans won't cure the problem, they'll only mask it until something else fails. Your cooling system can cool the engine, but the coolant has to get to all the parts to do its job. This is a low-cost fix that will pay big dividends.

Hope this helps.

[Guest brh]

I had a radiator problem and when stuck in traffic on a hot day it would overheat pretty quickly, then once on the highway it would cool off pretty quick. Had this problem for awhile until one day I got stuck in traffic and had to rev the engine to keep the light off. Thats when I got serious. My radiator was 30% blocked. You need to look in other directions as I am pretty sure ya don't have radiator or air flow issues, there is something else. Have you pulled the pump to see what shape the impellers are in.

[Mark Shaw]

Rebecca,

My suggestion to check the bottom hose was only a first step in troubleshooting your problem. Matt correctly described a more serious problem.

If you do have lots of accumulated crud inside the cooling jacket, it may cause the coolant to "spot heat" inside the engine and cause foaming when it gets to the suction side of the water pump and/or boil over at slower speeds.

I agree that you should clean out all the crud you can as other have described, and then flush the engine block with the radiator disconnected.

You should also, reverse flush the radiator to remove any crud already acumulated in it.

[Matt Harwood]

Here's a good thread that discusses a lot of possible problems and solutions:

http://forums.aaca.org/ubbthreads.php/topics/497259/Re_1950_Roadmaster_overheating

[TxBuicks]

I had a 66 Skylark one time that hinted at over heating, so I did the first thing everyone did back then, that is to remove the thermostat, causing the water to flow easier through the hoses. Well, that made it worse, and the symptoms were exactly as you described them. The car would run cooler in town than on the highway. The reason was that the coolant was flowing so well, not restricted by a thermostat anymore, it did not have time to cool off in the radiator. At slower speeds, it stayed in the radiator longer. Has anyone else experienced this?

[Matt Harwood]

100% true, Roy. A common misconception, but all the thermostat does is set the <span style="font-style: italic">minimum</span> temperature at which the car will run. Unless it's broken or stuck, it has nothing to do with overheating. Keep it in there!

[JohnD1956]

Had a chance to take some pics of the coolant filter we put in our 56.