|
What is the radiator? Cooling a 350 in an S-10/15 is a real exercise. Small space for radiator and tight around the engine just doesn't lend itself to super good cooling so parts selection gets to be pretty important. You didn't state whether this has air conditioning, which is another layer of heat problems on-top of just cooling the engine.
A seperate engine oil cooler is an effective way of bringing operating/coolant temp down. This is especially important if you're running an automatic. At 250 degrees coolant temp, youre running the slush box way too hot if so equipped, an external cooler for it would also be a good idea. Always place a thermostatically controlled by pass in these cooler circuits so that when the weather is cold, oil is not sent to the cooler where it becomes too cold. Manufacturers of these coolers also sell these therm bypass valves. This is a more effective use of your money than water weter and electric fans. Although if you have to install an oil cooler inside the frame a seperate fan for it can be a big help.
The Corvette radiator GM part 52453612 works pretty good though I don't like plastic tanks and won't use them any more because the long term durability of the plastic tanks isn't very good with the S-10/15 conversion. BeCool makes an aluminum tank and core radiator for this swap that works well.
You can also drop back and use the copper/brass radiator for the 350 Nova/Camaro,Firebird/Monte Carlo from the 1970's. These can be had in choices for the 350 396, 427, 454 with options like air-conditioning, heavy duty and auto transmission. These big block, air condiitoning, and heavy duty models come with 3 or 4 tube cores and are very effective. For mounting they will drop into the stock S-10/15 radiator frame using the GM rubber mounts on the bottom of the tank. they stand a little tall for the radiator frame so at the top simply drilling a 1/4 inch hole through the truck's radiator frame and the radiator's frame. Then slicing the curl off a pair GM rubber mounts and placing then between the tank to core rib and pulling it all together with a couple machine screws and self locking nuts gets the job done. As you can tell by the detail this is my favorite solution. If you're running electric fans as you must with an LT-1/4, additional shrouding isn't necessary. If you build one of these with a conventional SBC having a belt driven water pump and fan, then shrouding and baffling is more important to insure air is sucked thru the entire radiator core.
Contrary to literature on the subject of the SBC to S-10/15 swap, in my experience there is NO way to make a 4.3 liter V6 radiator cool a V8 in this swap. I did several of these and none of them worked, in the end all were replaced with a V8 radiator, so don't even start down this road it's a waste of time and money.
Thoughts on Water Wetter, again contrary to the literature and some people's experience, I've never been able to achieve any kind of an sufficient improvement with this stuff. At best maybe 5 degrees, and when you're motor is overheated at 250 degrees, reducing that temp to 245 is of no help. Same goes for messing around with the ratio of ccolant to water. There may be an effect one can measure in the lab, but out on the street nada. Reducing the coolant ratio, however, will especially at high temperature encourage accelerated oxidation of the metals in the cooling system. Aluminum being more reactive than cast iron, you can kiss your heads good-by pretty quickly when you cut the coolant to water ratio back to where there's insufficient rot protection left in the mix. You must remember that cast iron and aluminum in the presence of an electrolyte such as water, forms a battery, it's also a plating solution. The aluminum is dissolved and plated on the cast iron. A major function of engine coolant is to reduce the conductivity of the cooling solution so this reaction doesn't take place. Some of this is accomplished by the fact that glycols are not conductive so their dilution of the cooling water reduces the opportunity for electrons from differing molecules to find a conductive path. The other thing coolant does is use suicidal molecules like zinc which are more reactive than aluminum so they react and plate out on both the aluminum and cast iron. How good that protection is, is strickly dependant upon how many zinc or phosphorous molecules are in the mix. And yes this is the stuff that wears out of the coolant with time and needs periodic replacement.
A word about electric fans which also applies to universal shrouds. Many of these things include funky methods of mounting to and thru the radiator core. DON'T, the core is not designed to react the vibration and mounting forces these things generate, sooner or later, but usually sooner, the core will fail if you mount this stuff that way. These things must be hard mounted to the structure of the truck's radiator frame or not used at all.
Well that's a bigger data dump than you were expecting isn't it? Time on my hands is a dangerous thing.
How about that chase in Houston today?! Too bad Chevy can't use that footage to advertise their off road pick-ups.
Bogie
Edited 7/21/2006 3:40 pm by oldBogie
|