Ahoy All,

I am having a heck of a time keeping my 67 2d Post cool!! I am in Mesa AZ, and having said that, you understand that in the summer here, the temps are almost always over 105 degrees, with many days in the 110 plus area.

I am running a World Products 427 small block with aluminum heads, 10.5:1 compression, Holly 750DP, RPM Air Gap intake, Hooker super comp headers, 700R4 (separate cooling) and A/C. When I moved here from Colorado I was running a 7 blade GM 18" clutch fan with custom shroud.....BeCool aluminum radiator with a 180 thermostat. The car never ran over 200 degrees in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic and mostly sat between 185 and 195 degrees.

I moved to AZ during the winter and never had any cooling issues....then came SUMMER!, Now the car runs 225 in normal traffic, 245 in rush hour, and 220 on the open freeway. OUCH!

I purchased a new aluminum radiator (327/350), with a aluminum shroud containing two 11" Spal puller fans (a little spendy) wired each fan with it's own 40 amp relay and set them to turn on at 160, and off at 200. l

I still have the same cooling issues!!! Even worse if I try to run the A/C. You don't want to drive out here without A/C....believe me! So here I sit, unable to drive the car in the summer, out a bunch of $$ on new cooling gear and still have the problem. What's UP????

Any help from the collective intellect of the group would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Randy

Sounds like you had the right fan and set up to cool you down before but just ran out of radiator. A larger thicker radiator will cool you down again. When you say 327/350 are you talking about a thicker radiator than you had before (added cores)? Or did it get bigger in frontal area instead?

Big Dave

I had the same issues with my set up. I ended up going with the dual 11in spal fans and an alumitech aluminum radiator and still had heating issues. I ended up having to change the initial timimin to 14 and it solved the problem. Spended more money than I had to on fan shroud, new water pump, new lower hose, finally was reading chevelles and someone was talking about initial timing and the effect on temp. It seemed to work. Just my experience, hope it helps.

Agreed timing has a tremendous effect on temp of motor. But it was running fine before in a cooler climate which makes me think his radiator isn't adequately sized to shed the heat under the added stress of the extra degrees (cars don't care if it is a dry heat or not, it is all too hot to them to deal with).

Big Dave

Just a thought but have you tried Royal Purple ,Purple Ice Additive .I've heard good things about it. Also a high flow thermostat might get the temperature down a bit.

Randy welcome to Team Nova and Arizona :D My El Camino runs 200 - 220 in the summer heat. When the radiator blew out the engine saw around 280 (according to Autometer when I sent the mechanical guage in for repair).

Randy I feel for you man. I had the same kind of problems with cooling a 540 big block in the summer even here in Kansas. I tried the coolant additives, I bouth the biggest Griffin Aluminum radiator I could squeeze in my Camaro, had dual 14" electric fans, 180' high performance thermostat, retarded the timing back man I tried everything and I never could get that car to run cool. Granted it had a pretty big roller cam and 11:1 compression but I never could get it to run cool. The slightest stop and go traffic and she would start to rise to around 235 until I could get rolling again, then it would cool down. I don't know what to tell you but hope the advice you get here will help your situation. Sounds like you did have the best set up before though with your stock clutch fan, I've had so many people tell me that's where a lot of folks go wrong when they get away from that. I think Big Dave may be right, you might want to go back to the other setup you had and BECOOL are supposed to be pretty good radiators from what I've heard so maybe you just need something a little bit bigger for the Arizona desert heat. I know this probably doesn't help you, but at least you know that you're not alone and that a lot of us have been there too!!! Good Luck Man!