Ever since i rebuilt my engine over the winter it's been running a lot hotter during the races.
At first i thought it was just that it hadn't been tuned properly and indeed once it had been tuned the problem was much less. However, the
other week at Donington it got very hot very quickly and my dials were reporting 150 degrees oil temp and 110+ degrees on water (it was boiling out of
my expansion tank on the scuttle and dripping into the driver footwell - yeeeouch!).
I'm not sure what i've done wrong during the rebuild but it seems to be turning a lot of my energy into heat rather than forward motion.
Does anyone else have any temperature problems?
Have you had a pressure check on your system...and added water wetter!
No i haven't had a pressure check, but can try one. I have switched to 'special' (i.e more expensive) anti-freeze which is supposed to give better heat transfer and only boil at 130 degrees but dare i believe what it says on the packet?
hey up mate
i assume that you are running a x-flow.. i had that same problem, fresh rebuild and it ran a bit hot!! i know what you mean by hot water on yor feet!!
anyway, im not sure what the problem was, the system was blead and ran for 50miles problem free. on the way to the SVA it decided to be a little pig,
the temp went off the dial! the rad wasnt getting any hot water through to it even throu the system was fine the day before! the only thing i could
find wrong was the rad cap (which was brand new!) had blown the rubber seal can only think this allowed air into the system causing an air lock...
replaced cap and it ran at a steady 90deg all the way home...
hope this gives you an idea, for the sake of a few quid for a cap may sort a few things...
all the best
bob
Rob
Check out this thread for my answer.
http://boardroom.wscc.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?s=823c132e6a5d401360fc59e71a7a3ef5;act=ST;f=3;t=17716
Failing that, email me a phone number, and I'll talk you through a number of ideas that all seem to have worked!
Dickie
Flippin' heck Dickie, you get everywhere! Err, except from behind me in the races. Damn. 
BdB - I am running a 1300 X-flow and an original Escort rad in a similar but messier way to Dickie. I've brimmed the system and run it for ages
but if there are airlocks in the water jacket i don't know how to get them out if they don't naturally bleed out with the system
pressurised. 
I also have an oil cooler, which some 750MC racers don't use (don't see one on Dickie's car for example). Paul B said he just changes
the oil every race or couple of races instead. ££Yikes££.
I'm going to try completely ducting air from enlarged intakes in the nose direct to the oil cooler with no leaks and hope that solves the
problem. Even if it does though i'm still confused as to why the engines running so much hotter since the rebuild. What did i do wrong?
Cheers for the help guys!
We had lots of over heating probs last year. Couple of things we did to solve it.
1. Blank off area around rad so that air going into nose cone goes over rad.
2. We run with no fan. Once you are moving at any sort of speed (which I always understood to be the general idea....) the fan just disrupts airflow.
At the very least get a "puller" like Dickies,so that is on the back of the rad.
3. We use a 3 core rad from Anglia Radiators, as we never got enough cooling capacity whatever we did with the original escort rad.
We also bleed from the spigot on the top tank on the rad (Dickie has blocked his off in the pics). We T into the same breather that goes to the
expansion bottle from the 'stat housing.
Hope this helps.
Rob
Do you have a hose going to the inlet manifold? You don't need one if you do. If you don't then there will be a blanking cap in its place
(there are 2 that look in the right place. The lower one is bigeer and coolant. The upper one is smaller and petrol!) With the engine running you
can undo this blanking plate to make sure there are no air pockets in there.
Other than that put in a thermostat that has had the innards removed, ensure you have a full cap on the thermostat housing to block off the overflow
pipe, and try and keep your hoses as unconvoluted as possible.
Can you put some pictures on here?
Dickie
Rob
My main problem with overheating turned out to be a duff sender/gauge. Have you got an IR temp gun that you can check the actual hoses with? My old
gauge was reading 45' when not connected to the sender, and evened out at 105-110 when the hoses were all comfortably about 80 (ideal).
Dickie
PS No oil cooler as you thought.
I have got a hose going to the inlet manifold rather than it being blocked off. Bizarrely when i first got the car last year it went to the manifold
via a heat exchanger. I can only guess this used to be part of a cabin/windscreen heater system before the car was modified for racing. I'll
try bleeding the system from there.
I do have a full-depth cap and my hoses are pretty straight, except for the reverse S to get around the steering rack.
My rad is old and skanky (and virtually transparent) so i'm guessing it's not giving me the heat transfer i need. Everyone seems to
recommend Polo rads but i don't know which model or year to go for and i also remember reading once someone complaining how it fouled their
nosecone. Any advice?
p.s I'll work on getting some pictures but will also show you the car at Cadwell if you've got a spare 5 mins.
Rob
Polo rad number to follow - I'm just off to a meeting, will be back by about 1030.
Spare 5 min at Cadwell - back straight, most laps!!!!!!! No worries!
Dickie
Polo Rad is:
German, Swedish & French Part number - 17321B
VAG ref - 867 121 253E
Description Radiator
POLO 1.05 84>;1.3 82-7/90
Should be about £45+VAT. GS&F are best place to get them from, especially if you go in person. I ran a Golf one last year which is slightly
wider (5cm - only just fit in the nosecone). I didn't know which model, so just took it down to GS&F, and they brought out about 8 rads
before we found the right one.
Dickie
Cool, thanks Dickie.
I've found a place called Volks apart which do them for £45 too, but they're in London. I'll do a net search to see where the GSF
people are (guessing the name's not the obvious clue...).
Still don't get how people can run without an oil cooler unless my water circuit just isn't doing any of the work at all. Hmmm.
Cheers
Rob
GSF is at www.gsfcarparts.com
Sorry the link didn't come through when I copied and pasted from elsewhere! They are all over the place.
But to be honest any motor factors should be abl;e to get it for around that price, either from Valeo or Unipart etc...
Dickie
I've had a look at your other post and can't get the pictures to display, is it possible you could e-mail me some when you get a sec! or
post them on here. I'll U2U my work e-mail, (the home one takes ages to download pics.)
I haven't had any cooling probs before but want to move my header tank to the scuttle rather than under the nosecone, I've got hold of a
clio tank but am struggling to get the right size hoses/reducers, any advice on suppliers or more suitable (reasonably priced) tanks?
Thanks
Gavin
I suppose your water pump is working OK?
How big is the crankshaft pulley, and how big is the water pump pulley?
Dickie
Gavin
Not sure what my header tank is, but it is off a Ford of some sort. I'll atke a picture of it as well, and email you them all when I get home.
I'll include part numbers if I can see any.
Dickie
Dickie,
Do you know the thread sizes of the two manifold blanking plugs? Assume you can get them from a plumber's merchant?
many thanks in anticipation
RJ
Blanking plugs - no idea, but I know a man who does - I'll be back once he answers....
The Polo radiator made only a tiny bit of difference to my overheating problem so we tried lifting the rear edge of the bonnet up by an inch using two
nuts taped to the scuttle. It worked a treat - water temp was a steady 75-80 during the races.
I'm really surprised that the low pressure under the car wasn't enough to hoover the hot air out through the open bottom of the engine bay
but at least now i know.
Shame that it wasn't overheating which brought an end to my last race on Sunday. Coming through the hairpin i suddenly lost all drive and
couldn't get it restarted no matter what. Having checked it later i found that a spade connector had come free in my wiring and no power was
getting to my ignition.
Bugger.
Easy (and cheap) fix though!
Rob - tough luck mate. I wondered how you had managed to crash into the barrier there - clearly you hadn't crashed, merely pulled over. My
videos from the weekend are the best yet. Real close stuff, especially when I spun at Park!
Blanking plug for coolant hose on the inlet manifold is 3/8" NPT.
Dickie,
Any chance of you putting your race video's on your website?
Watching Des & Al's vid's is fantastic motivation to get me started on cleaning up all my donor parts & start my build proper; would
be great to see the action from your car too.
Rob.
Rob
I wish I could put the videos on. But I only have an old analogue camera, and converting them to digital means a 15 min race is about 500 Mb. Even I
wouldn't bother downloading them!
That said, the 2 from Cadwell are superb - my best races yet I think. Far more interesting than Des's videos - who wants to see an empty track
in front of them anyway (me me me me....... One day......)
Dickie
Dickie - you should get yourself one of these little digital camcorders like i've got now. It's a Mustek DV5000 and managed to record all
the races at the weekend quite happily. It was only £95 too!!!
I've compressed them down from 200Mb of 640x480 @10 frames per second to about 50Mb each at a still prefectly reasonable quality. Not sure how
to go about posting them anywhere where people can get at them though. Plus mine tend to be just full of the back end of Dave Black's car and
also the (extremely wide) car of Colin Beckwith.
Check out the piccy (it's only 80mm long!)
[Edited on 8/6/04 by Rob Palin]
Rescued attachment mustekDV5000_HRW.jpg
Ideally I'd like one with AV IN so that I can add a bullet camera. Where did you find it for £95 - and how big a memory card did you need for
the races?
Any ideas on one with an AV IN for cheap money?
There may not really be a need for a bullet cam when it's as tiny as this - check out the picture below. You can see i've clamped it onto
the diagonal of the rollcage and it's barely noticeable (although we left the flap open accidentally).
I was using a 256Mb secure digital card and was able to get about 40-45 mins of 640x480 video (pretty much as good as a TV) at a slightly jerky 10
frames per second. With all the waiting on the grid at Cadwell a single race filled the card so i used my mate's portable hard drive to dump the
data to between races.
I got mine from Directfrom.com but there are quite a few places offering them for similar money.
[Edited on 8/6/04 by Rob Palin]
Rescued attachment Cadwell01_small3.JPG
Rob
Mmm, tempting.
Please could you email me a short clip of full quality video so I can see what it is like? I'm on broadband so a couple of Mb will be fine!
richbrown@dsl.pipex.com
Thanks
Dickie
No problem. I'll have to do it this evening though because i'm at work and only have the full-fat (200Mb) versions of the files that i
burnt to DVD.
When i asked our IT people about video editing software yesterday i got a very unpleasant response so i'm stuffed until later on.
Thanks!
I'm now 6040 words through my (supposed) 20 000 word thesis. If I can hit 12000 I'll be very happy as I appear to be running out. Oh yes,
and I'm off to Le Mans on Thursday morning 
Can you actually start it yourself once strapped into the car? (I don't have a team like you do)!
20,000 words!?! I did about that for my Msc thesis but unfortunately the majority of them were bollocks!
I can start the camera from inside the car but we decided to start it in the assembly area for the first few times to make sure it started ok. Now
we've more experience i'll do it myself to avoid having to edit out up to 8 minutes of twiddling my thumbs on the grid waiting for the
previous race to finish. (the only bad thing about Cadwell Park).
quote:
Originally posted by DickieB
That said, the 2 from Cadwell are superb - my best races yet I think. Far more interesting than Des's videos - who wants to see an empty track in front of them anyway (me me me me....... One day......)
Dickie
I emailed Des and Al to that effect - great result, but the video was "merely" a masterclass in perfection - dull to watch!
Mine are much better - and good news - I now have them down to a manageable size to post on the web. I've done the first (28 Mb), and will do
the 2nd later then post them on my website, www.TeamDickie.co.uk
Dickie
Good news indeed - I'm eagerly awaiting them on your site.
It's also a good way for us newbies to get an idea of the track and how best to drive it. Can't wait 'til I join you; lot's of
building to be done b4 then tho!
Rob.