Brent, I am building my West Coast now and have learned a few things from the wealth of experience on this site, I have yet to fire mine up but the WC cooling system is not optimum and needs some improvements. Here is what I learned building mine. Take a systemic approach
Simply stated, at low idle revs and stationary, you want max water flow through the rad and max air flow possible.
1) Air entrappment, some have added an extra coolant line from rear of intake manifold (drill and tap into coolant passage) and connect it into outlet elbow at the front of intake to ensure no air remains in the rear of the engine heads/block. ByronRace on this site did this on his WC and reports good results. He also made other changes and does not use the chrome tank.
2) If you purchased the nice V-belt March pulley set from WC, take the large underdrive Water Pump Pulley and throw it out! Buy the smaller WP pulley (correct size) that will give you higher water flow at idle, go to the March web site for the part number.
2) Fan Shroud- MUST HAVE! The WC is set up for failure without a COMPLETE fan shroud for the single electric 15" puller fan. I am building my shroud now. Its all about making the set-up efficient to pull air through 100%of the WC radiator core (16" x 24" = 384 sq inches) on the WC 4.25" thick radiator. The 15" flex-a-lite with a small shroud= 256 sq inches pulling through the core or only 66% of the total core area. The fan still has to convince me its adequate wont know until I run mine and do some shake down testing. With a good shroud, the 2800 cfm fan should be adequate. The thicker your radiator core is, the more efficient (max cfms across max surface area) your puller fan and shroud combo needs to be to pull air through the core compared to a thinner core rad. Pusher fan will help without a doubt but does create more restriction at highway speeds but your air velocity over the core fins is higher also at highway speed.
3) Front Shroud- This would be another benefit to duct the air into the 16x24 core instead of letting the air travel around the core, (path of least resistance) we want the air to go through the rad core for max benefit. I cant try this until I install the body ,so I cant comment.
3) Another WC owner went with twin 12 inch SPAL fans pushers (using the thick 4.25" thick core, due to a unique set-up with a blower that didn't allow clearance for an engine side puller fan. ByronRace reported this with great cooling results accordingly.
4) Need to run a thermostat 180-190 F should be fine, and WITH an air bleed hole (STEWART sells one or you can drill your own 3/16" hole, dont use a restrictor for street driving, we dont want to reduce water flow we want to keep it moving.
5) Your target should be to keep the water temp 180-200F with 180 crusing and 200 at idle. My crate motor uses the Alumnum SCJ heads and I want to keep them cool as possible for a lng happy life : ).
6) Changing anti-freeze % below 50% helps but it should not be needed in well designed cooling system since specific heat of pure wate is better than any mixture with
antifreeze. Same with using additives that change the specific heat, dont need those either if the system is well designed but folks report improvement using them.
My 2 cents
Bill
Hybrid Mode
