Engine cooling patterns....

mrvette

mrvette

Phantom of the Opera
Joined
Mar 24, 2008
Messages
15,194
Location
NE Florida
MYBAD79 said:
where is your temp switch located ? Towards the back of the heads ? That area runs cooler than the front (at the thermostat housing). I have two gauges, one at the rear and on at the thermostat, the two gauges at the top left, rear is at 180, front is at 210...... maybe you're just not getting to 195 where your switch is....
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Karsten, you comment above in the other thread on fan switches...struck a bell with me here, in that with the LT1 manifold on the L98 engine I am running a remote T stat housing, two ~1' hoses to the t-stat right behind the radiator...

the computer says it's running ten degrees cooler there than what the senders/gauges say at the driver's head between 1&2 cyl.....

I find it hard to believe it could be a 10f difference in temps, but it's very consistent....and verified several ways.....

but now you saying the rear cylinders are running cooler?? I have tried to get the cyl head plug outta the 6-8 side in the rear there, but that muvva is in there good, and it's stripped clean, so I gave it up, not pulling the head over it....

I had never seen any return cooling lines from the back of any sbc cooling crossover, but on the L98 there is/was one, and that circuit to the water pump is functional on this car, the question is.....anyone know why it is there on the aluminum head L98 engine?? it was a PIA to hook it up, but it was done....did I waste my time, or why did the factory do it??
I figgered it was necessary for superior cooling.....meaning there was a hot spot in back of the heads/rear of the engine...but you say it runs cooler there...:blush::confused:
 
I'll be interested in the comments people have on this. I always found it fairly amazing that there could be shuch significant temperature differences between regions of the motor. I used to think it was more or less at equilibrium but that certainly isn't the case.
 
Most of the heat is created in the head, so that's where it gets hottest. The LT1 uses the same principle as a reverse flow heat exchanger. I have posted about the pulsating flow in SBCs before, this is eliminated with the LT1, resulting in less hot spots, micro boiling and therefore it's less detonation prone. Hence the ability to run a higher compression. However, for the complexity it didn't yield the warranted results to keep it for the Gen III engines.

A lot of race cars run a Y type system w/ burp/steam lines coming from the back of the manifold to the front. Yellow73SBC has those on his car too I think.
 
It must be in a couple of threads here somewhere, I wrote about one side getting dominance over the other. If you can't find it, I'll type it out again :)
 
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