A little update on the cooling system: I installed the stock 3.4 mechanical fan (without a shroud) and went for a little test run. It was another 92 deg day and the coolant temps got up to 230 deg F running about 75mph. So if anything the e-fan works better than the mechanical fan, although its not really a fair comparison without a shroud. I'll be putting the e-fan back on. I also installed an oil temp gauge and found what I had expected, some fairly high oil temps (260 deg F). Here's where the probe was installed: I'll be installing a nice big oil cooler with a sandwich plate adapter (with a thermostat) between the oil filter this week. That should also take some heat out of the coolant since the coolant cools the oil with the factory oil cooler. I'll also be adding to the cooling capacity with a couple more large oil coolers under the truck and a pump to circulate the coolant from the heater hoses through these extra coolers. This will be like running with the heater on (when the pump is switched on), but the heat will be dumped under the truck instead of in the cab. Here's the new coolers along side the radiator, it should be a fairly good increase in capacity.

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Here's the pump (I found a deal on ebay with one of the coolers) 2nd hand but unused.



I flow tested it and got 2 gpm. But the nice thing is its a suction type pump that will suck fluid in as well as push it and it can push at a fairly high pressure (around 40-50 psi). The other pumps that I looked at were higher flow rates (like 4-7 gpm) but at very low pressure. I'd rather have a pump that can push the coolant though these coolers without worring about back pressure cutting my flow rate down to a trickle. And having the suction ability makes it so the pump doesn't have to be at the lowest spot in the system.

I also flow tested the coolant though the heater hoses and found it to be only about 1/2 gpm and that was at about 2500 rpms. So 2 gpm should be about 4 times the normal heater core circulation (plenty).

This is the air intake tube from a 3.0 V6. I've found a use for it funneling air up to my extra cooler but I need two of them.

Thanks

Got the oil cooler on:



The hose routing went a little closer to the exhaust than I wanted, so I'm making a heat shield for it.


The hose is a cotton covered 1/2" hydraulic hose rated to about 300 deg F and some ungodly pressure. It's very tough but not very flexable compaired to a plain rubber hose. My main concern is having the hoses routed so the engine can move without stressing the fittings on the cooler. I also (see page 5) have my engine mounts chained down to limit engine movement which should help.

Because of lack of space to work I test fit it all with the fittings loose and marked the clocking of the swivel fittings with a marker, then tighten every thing up off the truck:


Even had room for the bigger Taurus filter:




I forgot to fill the cooler with oil so I'm pumping oil into it before start-up so the engine doesn't go without oil for the extra seconds it takes to fill. The cooler and hoses held about 1/2 quart.

Thats a very nice cooler setup.

Ever thought about adding a dual filter kit with bypass?

my thought exactly


and mtgoat we need part numbers and a place to order that setup its sweet.

The sandwich plate adapter with thermostat was made by Mocal (part # OTSP1) Ordered from here:
http://www.batinc.net/mocal.htm

The cooler is an Earl's oil cooler (part # EAR22510) with the optional bracket (part # EAR1725) There are lots of places to buy Earls parts (like Summit Racing), but the cheapest I found was Barnett Perforance in Atlanta 800-533-1320. That cooler was biggest cooler I could fit in the spot I had avalable. They make lots of different sizes so measure the place you want to put a cooler and pick a size that fits. Don't forget to leave room for the fittings.

I would suggest installing a oil temp gauge first to see what temps you're running.

yep yep okay just wonder i thought that setup looked familar. thats pretty much the same stuff i was looking at when i was working on my swap. but i ran out of money before i got to that point. oh well hopefully soon i can finish with the tranny upgrade, supercharger, oil coolers, fuel cooler, power steering cooler, and elec fan.

Finally something worked to bring the temps down! After installing the 3 extra coolers I was able to bring the coolant temps down 15-20 deg and the oil temps came down 25-30 deg.

The test run today was in the hottest weather yet about 95 degs F and the coolant got up to a high of about 210 F at 75 miles per hour and the AC on all the way. (in town driving was around 190-200). I think I can live with that. The hottest oil temps were 230-235 F. Not sure if that's good enough or not, but I'm sure its better than the 260 I was hitting before. I can get more air flow to the oil cooler pretty easy by making a wind deflector for it, I'll probably do that but it will need to come off before going off-road. One more thing to add to the pre-trail duties (air down, disconnect sway bar, remove wind deflectors).

I tapped into the heater hoses before and after the cab with these "T"s I found at Lowes, bypassing the heater:


The line that would normally go into the heater core in the cab now also goes to this cooler:


I found this oil cooler scoop thingy on e-bay (the guy said it was from a Nascar racing team) but it appears to be brand new.





Here's the seller: http://stores.ebay.com/Chambers-Sportscards-Inc Winning bid was $32 plus shipping. This was my first time working with carbon fiber and its a dream to work with. Drills as easy as plastic but its stiffer than steel and very light weight. Drilling it makes a little pile of what looks like pencil lead shavings. It appears to be very strong with unbelieveable stiffness .

After that cooler the coolant goes to the pump:


At first I mounted the pump to the bottom of the cab floor but that was too loud so I had to remount it with a homemade bracket and bolt it to the frame (sharing 2 of the slider mounting bolts.) Its still pretty noisey at speeds below about 45 mph, but at highway speeds I can't even tell if its running or not. I guess that's ok because it reminds me to turn it off at slower speeds. I really only need it at highway speeds anyway with the possible exception being long very steep grades.


After the pump I put in the extra tranny cooler that I had removed earlier. I made a frame for it to help protect it from stressing.


I mounted it here:

After that 2nd cooler the line "T"s back into the line that normally goes from the cab to the engine.

Kind of unrelated, but what kind of sliders do you have?

Here you go
http://www.yotatech.com/50374870-post423.html

We have been having a string of 100 deg days here and I've been running tests at the hottest part of the each day with some discouraging results. The coolant temps on Sat got as high as 230 and the oil got to 240. It almost seems like the coolant temps climb exponentially with the ambient temp but I need more data points to jump to that conclusion.

I decided to test out both Brians' strong suggestions that my TJM winch bumper was blocking too much of the radiator. So yesterday I removed the bumper and winch (skid plate has been off for 2 days) and went for a test drive in the 100 deg heat.




It did help, the coolant ran about 10 degrees cooler than the day before, maxing out and holding fairly steady at 220* F at 75 mph. Oil temps were running about 235* F. Better, but not excactly the magic bullet I was hoping for.

Just as always the temps drop quickly as soon as I slow down, "I'm talking" take an exit off the interstate, pull up to a stop sign, look down and the temps have dropped 5-10 deg. With continued in-town driving the coolant temps cool down and seem to stabilize around 205 area. BTW the tranny temps have been relatively cool (165 F at 75 mph and up to a max of 200-205 after some city driving) The radiator ATF cooler is now totally bypassed and has been for quite a while.

This area in red is the area cover by the winch/bumper:

The blue area is an area that could also be opened up with some more cutting or drilling.

So I've come up with a redesign of the TJM bumper to make the winch removable and hopefully fairly easy to reinstall as needed. By cutting out the area in red here I can open it up to more air flow:

My idea is to fab up a steel plate (about 1/4" thick) to mount the winch with its feet down (instead of forward like it is now) and replace it in roughly the same spot when needed, which isn't very often really. More pics on that later.

Dale do me a favor and run the truck without the stat at all and see what your results are. I think you problem is eaither not enough coolant flow or not enough air flow under the hood. If the problem is air flow then with such a cramped engine bay chopping up your bumper will likely just be a waste of time. I'd suggest that if running without a stat doesn't work you put in a 1" spacer between the hood hinges and hood to try and create some air movement. If the spacer works then consider some sort of cowl induction hood setup.

I was considering removing the stat, but I haven't tried it yet. If that is the problem what options would I have except removing it in the summer and replacing it in the winter?

You may have missed it but I already ran a test with the hood removed completely and it didn't help at all. That would seem to eliminate the trapped air theory wouldn't it.

Wow thats still really warm, especially with the oil cooler setup....

Some other options that may have been mentioned but not looked at? Or maybe they have.

Heater hoses crossed and not cooling some coolant?

Blockage in the block??

Otherwise???

Yeah I already triple checked that.

Block flow? Not sure how to test that Keep the ideas coming

I think I will try removing the stat tommorrow.

Not having read (nor wanting to ), all 23 pages of this thread, did you bore the cylinders by any chance ?





Fred

Nope, the engine only has 28,000 miles on it.

RE: Overheating Issues and amount of airflow underhood...

*Kinda makes one wonder if the hardcore guys who go IFS-SFA have something going there. Removing all that IFS does leave plenty of breathing room. This will be really sad if after all this data/work, that ends up being the solution.

No quips Dale, just my head spinning ideas. I imagine if you were to add it all up the SFA would've been about the same expense.

Lucky Stiff!! *Some reason my subscription to this failed, so here's my re-subscribing.

Yeah, now that's thinking outside the box.

Dale i wish i had my truck put together the rest of the way so we could do some comparisons.

Im hopeing to finish it soon hopefully by october.

Well, I did graduate in Marketing/Finance, so lemme know if you need anymore ideas. LMAO!! Keep up with the good info, I love this thread.

Hmm, that I did not see coming... I was thinking that would be the magic bullet too (uh-oh).

Ok, so what have we covered over the past few months,

- Heats up on the HIGHWAY, cools off once you slow down...

- Taking off hood didn't help.

- Taking off winch bumper helped some, but not a lot. Engine still hotter on freeway than in-town.

- Freeing up airflow with fan shroud "flappers" didn't help.

- Lower-temp thermostat didn't help.


So this really only leaves a few options:

- Engine coolant passages blocked (seems unlikely on such a low-miles engine)

- Radiator doesn't have enough cooling capacity for the engine when running at highway speeds (need bigger/different radiator).

- Other?

I'm very suprised the bumper removal didn't do it, so I am literally out of ideas now


Edit: After some more reading, I think this confirms your "worst" fears:

This basically tells me you need a bigger/higher capacity radiator... since most all other options have been exhausted.

Well removing the t-stat didn't help at all, and if it's possible, I think it actually made it worse. Anyone want to buy a custom highflow t-stat lol



It was 102 deg for the test (the hottest day so far this year) and the bumper is still off, with the cruise control set at 75mph, the coolant was hitting 230. At the top of one long hill in which the boost gauge was hitting about 4 psi to hold the speed, the coolant hit 235 and I discovered at that point that the factory temp gauge just starts to move above the center of its range ever so slightly but it went back to the middle so quick I almost missed it. The oil temp maxed out at 240, ATF temp was a cool 170-180. This is frustrating and I'm thinking about putting on the stock pulley for less boost. I wish I'd just kept the 3.4 stock now. I was playing with the timing maps during the test yesterday which caused some flashing CELs and may have cause it to run hotter. But in the middle of the drive I when back to the previous timing map that I had before and it continued to run hot. Since the ECU needs time to adjust maybe I can throw out the day's test data as erroneous.

Yeah I think you're right Brian, but how's the best way to get more capacity? I'm thinking dual radiators rather than a bigger radiator (because the factory radiator spot is small), but I can't seem to work out the details and location unless I go to the spare tire location for the second radiator. I think a 2nd radiator would require a 2nd water pump too and there's a lot of details I'm not sure about with that. At the least I think the t-stat would have to be removed to run a 2nd waterpump.

I've also toyed with the idea of "T"ing off the upper and lower radiator hoses and bypassing some of the coolant to another big oil cooler, but the way things have been going with my other ideas I'm too discouraged now to think about it.