Not Ranked
Wow,
I posted this thread just about a year ago. I've learned a great deal on cooling systems over this time due to cooling problems I was having with my Cobra and another car that I'm restoring and from info on this site.
Some important system basics:
Cooling = the systems ability to disapate heat
Disapation=Coolant flow and a radiators ability to transfer heat
Anything that affects this disapation WILL have an affect on the temperature.
ie; reduce the coolant flow and the coolant will absorb more heat.
The radiator disapate's at a fixed rate at a given coolant flow at a given air flow (Xgal/min / XCFM = X degrees cooling).
Conversely, accelerate the coolant flow and at some point you will also affect the ability of the system to disapate heat ( the coolant needs to reside in the radiator long enough to transfer heat) This a why you need a TSTAT or restrictor.
As has been mentioned in this thread by others, too cold also has an affect on performance. I believe that the trick is to identify and maintain your optimum temperature over the range of changes in the factors that affect the system. For FE's a 180 appears in many cases to be the sweet spot.
Bryan FYI, I'm running a Flex-A-Lite Black magic fan with 2800CFM flow. The bad thing about this fan is that the "autoswitch" has a minimum setting of 190. I like the fan & the shroud design but the switch should offer more range. In addition it measures the surface temp of the rad. with the probe sensing the temp of air through the rad. (I would prefer a more accurate measure with the probe in the coolant and adjustable below 170.
Thanks all,
Mike
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