Cooling a 460/Head Gaskets

[ByronRACE]

My engine may be a little weird, but it's still basically a 385 series (460) foundation and it's in a West Coast. I disliked the way west coast did the coolant system. The expansion tank was unnecessary and large, the fill point was relatively low, there was no provision for removing trapped air from the back of the heads, etc. It looked prone to air lock and all the additional plumbing they added everywhere showed they were battling this problem.

I did things differently in my build. I put two fittings in the back of my intake manifold at the water passages to bleed a small amount of coolant forward bypassing the thermostat. I tied these lines into the thermostat housing. The thermostat housing is also the fill point and is the highest point in the engine compartment. Everything from the housing is down hill. I have a burp tank in the front right corner on the end of a 1/4" hose and it's set up to draw the fluid back into the thermostat housing if/when needed. The radiator is West Coast's "10 core" unit that I'm honestly not that thrilled with. It's brass, heavy as hell, and the fin density is poor. I would have done much better with my dollar to have an aluminum one fabricated locally. My water pump is a Meziere WP337 remote mounted low on the passengers side between the steering rack and the radiator. For fans, I have two 13" spal pushers on the front of the radiator with no shroud, and that's it. 1710CFM each.

Idles forever at 180deg F at 900rpm idle. Holds 185-190 at 2500rpm sustained stationary high-idle. Actual use, temp is 180-190. This engine is supercharged as well, so will generate more heat than normal. 2 fans come on if I'm at idle for a long time, otherwise just one. I have a fan controller built into my dash instrumentation.

When I fired this thing up the first time, I just fired it and let it come up to temp, then shut it off and let it cool completely. Then I opened the stop cock on the overflow and drained about 2cups of coolant, popped the cap and added about another 4 cups. That's it...level has remained the same and I've never seen anything out of the overflow since.

Anyway, just thought another combo might be interesting to note.