I'll have to observe the radiator hoses as well next time it starts up to make sure the lower doesn't start collapsing and cutting off coolant supply. That's a definite possibility. The one I have in there doesn't have a spring on the inside.
New engine no start issue
- Thread starter Buford T. JuSStice
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if you didn't run it that long and it heated up quickly if you have a electric choke the choke may have still be on which could have caused the run on. Since the builder ran the engine it had to be run for 20 minutes to break in the cam so if the engine had an overheating issue they would have seen that.
Right, so it's got to be something to do with either the fuel mixture, or coolant most likely, and not the timing. I'm still suspicious of the lower hose. It makes the most sense right now. I'll run it for a few minutes, observe, and turn it off before it starts getting hot again.
Thankfully being an iron block, iron head V8 there's plenty of iron to soak up all that heat and prevent immediate damage so while I'm worried about causing damage, I think it'll be fine just this once getting hot like that.
As a side note, the radiator I put in there is absolutely enormous. It's all aluminum, and the damn thing took nearly 3 and a half gallons of coolant before it was filled (with burping the hoses to make sure some of that went into the engine of course) The last half gallon or so (plus about a quart of straight water) went into the overflow tank. With all that coolant it still overheated in that little amount of time... so that's another reason the lower hose makes sense to me. The radiator must have been isolated from the engine preventing new coolant from flowing in.
your over heating sounds like an air lock take off the rad cap to burp it when it is running or turn on your defrost at the heat controls to burp it this very common with new engines
I agree with the air. There's no way an aluminum radiator should get to 260 in 10 minutes. Unless, of course, the thermostat is stuck shut.
Like I said, it was north of 260, almost 280. I'm the same though, up to 220-240 I'm not worried, but this made me move with the quickness to shut it down and stop the engine as soon as I saw how hot it was.
I went out and started it up, watched the lower hose, and it didn't seem to be collapsing, but I'm gonna continue to keep an eye on it. Didn't let it run for long, just enough to observe for a few minutes. It seemed to run just fine so I'm thankful to God for that. That incidentally has also just convinced me that when I eventually build my Pontiac engine up, I'm gonna stick with the iron heads it came with.
Went to start moving the other cars and started up my old Caprice. Noticed, "Wow, that fan moves a LOT of air..." and of course, it's an old steel fan with a fan clutch. I've got one of those nylon fans with the spacer. Read all sorts of reviews and saw nothing but praise for them so I figured, "Hey why not get that?" but in all the time I was in the garage with that thing going, it never seemed to move anywhere near as much air as that old steel fan did. I mean, I was standing a good 10 feet away from the Caprice and I was getting the equivalent of a strong breeze from it. The nylon fan barely projected air beyond the engine compartment.
So tomorrow I'm gonna go out and get a new fan clutch (the bolt holes from the one on the Caprice don't line up with the ones from the 383's water pump) and try out the old style steel fan and clutch.
I will definitely try that! However, I do know for a fact it got at least somewhere north of 260 like I said, because the reservoir boiled over, and that doesn't happen unless it's hot.
But thankfully for now it seems like the engine was able to handle it. But I'm going to be very careful not to let that happen again.
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