Hi Team,
Been a while, but we got delayed on the A-Team Drift Van project from last year. Got solidly working on it over the last month and have a super peculiar overheating issue. I'll put the list of mods below, but I have a feeling this is a super simple issue (duh moment) that one of you can help resolve.
Van runs amazing with one small issue that's driving me f*cking crazy on my initial light road testing. When driving at highways speeds on uphills, the temp gauge spikes to 240-260 in about 15 seconds. I'm hyper conscious of the motor and gauge and found a little trick to resolve the issue immediately. I drop the motor to neutral, turn off the ignition, coast, wait a couple seconds, then fire the engine back up, and the gauge immediately slams back down to 160 and generally holds for the remainder of the hill, flat ground, downhill. Temp holds solid for 10-15 miles, then does it again on the next little long uphill. Do the same, non-preferred rolling shutdown procedure--problem fixed.
I've driven with the doghouse off and had a laser temp reading on the thermostat, solid between 160-180 while the gauge is showing 240. The motor as far as I know isn't overheating and water is flowing. I haven't invested in rear end modifications (gear down and posi) as I'd like to get this issue resolved first. With a TBI motor, there are a variety of things that concern me and hoping you guys can help out.
Since this is being built to drift, I need to keep this thing cool.
My initial thought is that I just have an air bubble caught somewhere in the system. I've kept an eye on the coolant and over the past full warm/cool cycles, it's sucked down about 1/4 qt of fluid in the reservoir last night. I'm going to test run it today and see if the issue resolved itself... but I think it's deeper than that.
My Ideas on Potential problems:
-Some dickheaded bubble in the system
-Pinhole leak in head gasket on temp sensor side (grabbing test kit this morning)
-Water pump pulley/slipping. Had a pinhole transmission cooling line leak that sprayed fluid on the front of the motor. I cleaned everything up, but maybe the fluid interacted with the belt material and it's just not creating enough friction on the smooth pulley anymore. (grabbing new belt and brake parts cleaner this morning)
-Something going on with the timing/injection under load. I thought this might be a potential issue cured with the rolling restart.
-Something with the old gauge and or wire to the temp sensor.
Motor Mods: From front to rear.
-10" electric fan on front of the radiator. Placed top/driver side below the radiator inlet. Constant on with ignition.
-New stock radiator (shroud still installed)
-Performance flex fan (properly mounted at the right depth in the shroud)
-New water pump (Not the best pump. As a crossover year, the part number kept producing standard rotation water pumps. Went through 5 pumps at three parts stores to have them give me a reverse rotation water pump. Budget version. That said, I'm only doing highway driving with this now and it shouldn't be having this issue.)
-New Hoses
-New Radiator Fluid
-New Block Temp Sensor
-160 Thermostat
-14" x 3 in tall air cleaner
-Trans-dapt Swirl torque TBI Spacer
-Harris Tuning Stage 1 Chip
-New O2 Sensor
-New 2.5" exhaust system to X-Pipe, then to 2xFlowmaster Super 10 exhaust. No Cats.
I'm about to grab the keys on go out on another test run, but hoping you guys could throw ideas out there in case my ideas above aren't spot on. Thanks everyone!
Been a while, but we got delayed on the A-Team Drift Van project from last year. Got solidly working on it over the last month and have a super peculiar overheating issue. I'll put the list of mods below, but I have a feeling this is a super simple issue (duh moment) that one of you can help resolve.
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Van runs amazing with one small issue that's driving me f*cking crazy on my initial light road testing. When driving at highways speeds on uphills, the temp gauge spikes to 240-260 in about 15 seconds. I'm hyper conscious of the motor and gauge and found a little trick to resolve the issue immediately. I drop the motor to neutral, turn off the ignition, coast, wait a couple seconds, then fire the engine back up, and the gauge immediately slams back down to 160 and generally holds for the remainder of the hill, flat ground, downhill. Temp holds solid for 10-15 miles, then does it again on the next little long uphill. Do the same, non-preferred rolling shutdown procedure--problem fixed.
I've driven with the doghouse off and had a laser temp reading on the thermostat, solid between 160-180 while the gauge is showing 240. The motor as far as I know isn't overheating and water is flowing. I haven't invested in rear end modifications (gear down and posi) as I'd like to get this issue resolved first. With a TBI motor, there are a variety of things that concern me and hoping you guys can help out.
Since this is being built to drift, I need to keep this thing cool.
My initial thought is that I just have an air bubble caught somewhere in the system. I've kept an eye on the coolant and over the past full warm/cool cycles, it's sucked down about 1/4 qt of fluid in the reservoir last night. I'm going to test run it today and see if the issue resolved itself... but I think it's deeper than that.
My Ideas on Potential problems:
-Some dickheaded bubble in the system
-Pinhole leak in head gasket on temp sensor side (grabbing test kit this morning)
-Water pump pulley/slipping. Had a pinhole transmission cooling line leak that sprayed fluid on the front of the motor. I cleaned everything up, but maybe the fluid interacted with the belt material and it's just not creating enough friction on the smooth pulley anymore. (grabbing new belt and brake parts cleaner this morning)
-Something going on with the timing/injection under load. I thought this might be a potential issue cured with the rolling restart.
-Something with the old gauge and or wire to the temp sensor.
Motor Mods: From front to rear.
-10" electric fan on front of the radiator. Placed top/driver side below the radiator inlet. Constant on with ignition.
-New stock radiator (shroud still installed)
-Performance flex fan (properly mounted at the right depth in the shroud)
-New water pump (Not the best pump. As a crossover year, the part number kept producing standard rotation water pumps. Went through 5 pumps at three parts stores to have them give me a reverse rotation water pump. Budget version. That said, I'm only doing highway driving with this now and it shouldn't be having this issue.)
-New Hoses
-New Radiator Fluid
-New Block Temp Sensor
-160 Thermostat
-14" x 3 in tall air cleaner
-Trans-dapt Swirl torque TBI Spacer
-Harris Tuning Stage 1 Chip
-New O2 Sensor
-New 2.5" exhaust system to X-Pipe, then to 2xFlowmaster Super 10 exhaust. No Cats.
I'm about to grab the keys on go out on another test run, but hoping you guys could throw ideas out there in case my ideas above aren't spot on. Thanks everyone!