FE Cooling issue

[vettestr]

Hats off to the collective wisdom available here on the site. I know I leaned on the things being done as a sanity check and a few new tricks too. I was able to get 540 inches to live on the t-stat in Phoenix traffic at 110+ outside, but it took some work.

The Lincoln/Taurus 2 speed fan and posts by Elmariachi helped push me over the goal line. It does pull a few amps on high speed but I had plenty of power to spin the alternator after I kept her from overheating.

It sounds like you are close to meeting the cooling needs but still a little short. Try rolling up a couple of beach towels and prop open the hood a few inches. Place the towels under the hood near the windshield and take a test trip down the road. If allowing a little more air through the rad. and out of the engine bay drops the temp a few degrees then you know you just need more air flow.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by vettestr

Try rolling up a couple of beach towels and prop open the hood a few inches. Place the towels under the hood near the windshield and take a test trip down the road. If allowing a little more air through the rad. and out of the engine bay drops the temp a few degrees then you know you just need more air flow.

If you do this, just to be on the safe side, fasten your hood down with some twine or something. We had a local Cobra Club member have his hood go sailing off his car after he forgot to turn the hood handles to the "closed" position and then took her out on the interstate for a fast run.

[elmariachi]

Originally Posted by vettestr

The Lincoln/Taurus 2 speed fan and posts by Elmariachi helped push me over the goal line. It does pull a few amps on high speed but I had plenty of power to spin the alternator after I kept her from overheating

Sidebar story on that:

My Mexican reman'd 100 amp 1-wire alternator resisted that amp-sucking fan since day one (late 2009). The guy that rebuilt it warned me the 3G old-style alternator would maybe make it a year pushing that fan in Houston heat. So we are out in the God-forsaken desert expanse of West Texas this last April for the Big Bend Open Road Race and sure enough, voltmeter starts showing 9 volts. I called el Jefe and told him to FedEx me another. Alternator showed up the night before the race. The housing was clocked wrong so we used the old one to confirm we could disassemble and re-clock without issues. In the process, the brushes and guts fell out of the old one onto the floor of the trailer, serving as a stern warning. No biggie. But in the process of slightly separating the new one to rotate the housing, I pulled too hard and it came apart. Houston, we have a problem: Springs and bits and pieces of brushes everywhere.

My HCC buds helped me keep my cool long enough to figure out that we had a good top brush from the old alternator and a good bottom brush from the new one. Perfect. But how the hell do you keep the spring-loaded brushes in place inside the holder so you can re-stab the aramature? (Visualize heads and asses being thoroughly scratched while sucking on many cold beers.) Then the FE gods arrived. Two guys I didn't even know from Waco, TX running a Cobra and steeped in all things Ford and FE walked up and said "Oh yea, you gotta have a paperclip for that." "A paperclip?" Yep. Fifteen minutes later it was all back together, on the car and pumping 14+ volts. Now how the hell lucky is THAT? 10PM in the parking lot the night before the race, dazed and confused, about to eat $2500 in expenses and miss the race, then a guy with the right answers walks up.

Morale of the story: Get a big frigging alternator. And thanks to Ted Eaton and Jody Orsag for bailing my Okie butt out of a jam.

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