Get it hot and feel with your hand across the rad core. If you feel any cold spots chances are the core is clogged up.

 

Beechkid: Thanks for the insight, and the addresses and phone numbers! That’s awesome! It really helps to know where to look! We have a radiator shop here in Colorado Springs that’s been around 30 some years, so I’m going to try them first see what they got for me. On a bit of a budget, but I’ll look into those other two also!👍

 

Mark A: Good thought! Thanks! I’ll check that first!👍

 

Xlt4wd90: thanks for all your good advice! That’s a lot to take in, impressive that you had all that 3 o’clock in the morning!😂😂
I think I’ve definitely had the wrong cap on, one of those with the lever, so I’ll change that. I am going to look into a fan shroud after either getting my current radiator gone through, or getting a new one.

 

You are so welcome....and I agree...local shop is the best most of the time!

 

I won't spend the time to go through your previous points, but, with regards to this, the answer is no!!! The coolant must travel at the fastest speed where maximum heat transfer occurr's... LHT factors includes the number, diameter, material used and wall thickness of the "tubes", length as well to ID what the specific thermal transfer is..... too slow or too fast means inadequate/inferior heat transfer and if this "Latent Heat Transfer" occurr's at a rate that the engine and environment requires.

 

I guess it's hard to clearly express this but I'll try again:

The mass flow rate of the coolant stays constant throughput the system. That needs to be as high as possible going through the engine. But the total area of the tubes in the radiator is usually greater than the area of the inlet hose to the radiator, so the linear flow through the tubes is slower than the linear rate the hose. You want that dwell time spent in the tubes to be as long as possible to maximize heat transfer from the coolant to the air flowing across the tubes, assuming sufficient air flow from the fan/shroud/vehicle motion. This means you want the maximum volume in the tubes of the radiator, all else being constant.

 

Got kind of busy with the work week and all… Here’s an update. I put on a new cap without the lever and instead of the loop through hose bypassing the heater core, I plugged both the outlet from the water pump and the inlet from the block. Still the same -pegs hot after 5-10 minutes. Before I did that I ran heater hose from the block into a milk Jug. When I started the engine at idle it flows out OK, kind of slow, when I rev it up it really pours out. So I’m thinking I have the correct rotation water pump on it. I took the radiator to local radiator shop that’s been in business 35 years and he said it looked OK for what it was, being 53 years old. He didn’t like the number of rows or the inlet and outlet of it being in line above each other. He said he could do some modifications and change it around to make it a little better but it be over $300. Thinking of getting a different radiator with more rows and maybe the offset inlet and outlet ports. Also installing a fan shroud. I’m starting to lean more towards the blocked coolant passage in the manifold or heads.

 

Did you check flow of the top hose going to the radiator? In normal flow, the heater core input comes from the top of the front of the intake manifold, near the thermostat housing. Its RETURN goes to the lower of the two small pipes on the pump. The other small pipe on the pump is also an inlet; it takes input from the small bypass port on the thermostat housing. The only place where water should be coming out is through the thermostat housing to the upper radiator hose. Based on your description of water coming coming out of the small ports on the pump, your pump may indeed be turning the wrong direction. Is the engine using v-belts or a serpentine belt? If the latter, can you try to re-route the belt to turn the pump in the other direction, just for a test?

So your local radiator shop agrees that having both inlet and outlet on the same side is non-optimal? You can try to get one where the outlet is on the driver's side, but you would need a different water pump that points its inlet toward that side. There may be other structures that can get in the way.

 

The flow is not constant, that is why the systems on race cars running electric water pumps and mechanical pumps the calcs are different.

Let's look at it this way....

Let's say the objective is to remove 100 btu's of heat.....

1. water/coolant mix will only transfer so much heat at a certain timeframe; meaning if it travels too fast it does not have the time to maximize the heat transfer from the engine to the coolant and then the second transfer from the coolant to the atmosphere (via the radiator). If it moves too slowly, it will absorb the max heat it can too early and stop absorbing any further heat, yet it will transfer what it has absorbed to the atmosphere very effectively..... but excessive residual heat remains in the engine because it in essence "quit" absorbing say as early as the 1st half of the engine (which I have seen).

2. The thermal transfer calc MUST take into effect the diameter of the radiator "tubing"....the larger diameter lines have larger surface area which transfers more heat..... like an ice cube versus a block of ice...... say a block of ice that is 12" x 12" will take a lot longer to melt than if you take that same block of ice and cut it into 1" cubes.... more surface area, more heat transfer. Of course the shorter length the lines are, the less heat transfer, the longer the lines, the greater heat transfer because the length itself adds "surface area" and the longer duration of heat transfer

3. Materials.... including tubing wall thickness. While aluminum does transfer heat faster than copper, when people compare the 2 (radiators) and say...WOW the aluminum cools so much better..... if you are comparing to identical spec radiators including tubing wall thickness, length, etc. AL to copper, yes, but radiators are not made this way as each typically has completely different specs. Will either one work, when properly spec'd for a specific amount of heat transfer- yes.

 

See my comment below........

 

I think we're talking about the same thing here. The basic law of thermodynamics says that heat transfers from where there's more of it to where there is less of it, and the transfer rate is directly related to the temperature difference between the two areas. As soon as coolant of ambient temperature touches the hotter engine part, heat transfer starts at the highest rate. It immediately slows down because the engine part is getting cooler while the coolant is getting hotter, so the temperature difference decreases. So like you said, if the coolant moves too slowly through the engine, the transfer rate slows down too much, and possibly stops if it actually picks up enough heat where it reaches the same temperature as the engine.

Assume you can move coolant with ambient temperature through the engine at an infinite rate. Then the coolant temperature will always be at ambient while the engine part temperature drops. This maintains the maximum heat flow between the part and the coolant, even as he part cools (until the next heat generation event, like a combustion stroke). This also benefits the downstream parts that get the "later" coolant that have already been warmed up by the upstream parts.

Again, I think we're saying the same thing.

Geometrically, the circle has the smallest circumference to area ratio of any shape, so it's the worst shape for heat exchange tubes. This is why radiators use flattened tubes, regardless of material, to expose as much of the fluid to the outer surface as possible. And use lots of tubes to maximize the total flow area. Again, making this combined area grater than the area of the incoming hose will slow its linear progress through each tube, and, like using longer tubes, maximize its exposure time to the cross flowing air. The flow rate through the system may change with time, as engine speed varies, but at a given instance, the mass flow rate must remain the same throughout each part.

 

Back again… Darn annoying work week got in the way. So… I got my answer to what the trouble was. As it turns out, I am a jackass. The problem was me. I really appreciate all the effort and suggestions you guys have given me over the last few weeks. As it turns out I did this to myself. I was originally thinking the engine came out of a 1971 Ford galaxy. Later I figured it was closer to a 71 Ford bronco. When I was getting parts for the engine at first I was telling them a 1971 Ford galaxy with the 302. And my stupid *** got a temperature gauge for a 1971 Ford galaxy. I’m pretty sure looking back on it now that the 71 Ford galaxy had an idiot light instead of a gauge. So I was running a temperature sensor for 71 Galaxy with the 67 temperature gauge in it. I found a buddy that had a temperature gun and after 10 tests right by the thermostat hose and housing it always read between 175 and 180. Wrong sensor.😐😐😐Thanks for all your advice and your help! I do appreciate it.

 

AGREED!!!! In the 1st post, you just referred to speeding up the flow.... and not knowing your background or having a "millennial" think that all they had to do was make the flow faster to solve all the world problems... well, ya know......

 

I have a big smile of relief for you!!!!!! Good to know all is good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! versus the worst case scenario of tearing the cooling systems and heads apart !