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Overheating S7


Misternomer

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Any pics without the nosecone on?

In addition to the very valid points above : to me, in your last-but-one pic, it looks like there is a gap at the left side of the rad? If there's no ducting in the nosecone, then air will get scooped in via the nosecone front and (assuming we're at speed here) will take the path of least resistance to get back out again to low pressure. Depending on the course through the engine bay - I see side vents on the right, I'm going to guess there's one on the left too (?) - I'm guessing it will go straight through this nice, convenient gap at the side of the rad, and out the side vent, and very little of the air will take the arduous route through the radiator matrix :)

The "proper" way to do it :

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Now that I like a lot Brumster.  That gives me a standard to work to  so you have a hermetically sealed nosecone rear to engine bay.  Can I see that you've actually used rubber trim at all the jointed surfaces?  Proper job

Is there a reason you chose to pull the air rather than push?  Was clearance against the crank pulley an issue?  Am I right in thinking your fan is about 10"?

 

Edited by Misternomer
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I've always put fans on the back of my cars rads than the front, just habit I think, I've heard people argue over the benefits of either but I suspect it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other :). No clearance issues here so it's neater and less likely to get damaged, but obviously my car is a different setup to yours, being a Zero and with a different engine, my clearance behind the rad is pretty massive.

I would say yes, mine is a 12" or possibly a 10". It's a SPAL. Radiator is Seat Ibiza/Cordoba diesel but again, not being an S7, that's probably irrelevant for your setup.

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16 hours ago, theduck said:

On my s7 I had the radiator in front of the inboard suspension.  You have to lean the radiator back to make it fit but it will be far more efficient like that as airflow will be less blocked and you will have far more room for a decent fan.

That is the answer, the S7 or S3a have a large cross beam where the suspension mounts and that will block over half of your radiator airflow. Mount the radiator in the nose at an angle if required and put the biggest fan you can fit on it (in front is ok). I used some alloy tube to extend the lower pipe through the bulkhead and silicone for the top.

once this has been done and you have driven the car report back.

i had a number of issues originally as I had a standard single core Cortina radiator, I moved to a cool man double core with 42 tubes up from the 27 single tubes on the original, I think your ally rad will be just fine.

i use a thermostat that opens at 82 degrees (standard one opens at 88 degrees) and added an adjustable thermostatic switch which cam in a ready to fit joiner in to the top hose. I have a header tank and fitted a T piece bleed to the heater hose as that was the highest point. I don’t have a heater so just ran a 16mm silicon hose from water pump to inlet manifold.

This pretty much solved my issues but in the (long) journey to finding a complete solution I tried a number of heat management tricks.

There is a lot of heat under a Seven’s bonnet because it has an almost complete floor and nowhere for the hot air to escape. I heat wrapped the exhaust which helped a bit but the best mod by far was to prop the rear edge of the bonnet 5 to 10mm which lets a huge amount of hot air out.

The final heat management addition was to fit a 16 row oil cooler with thermostatic takeoff, this maybe overkill but I have 2 highly modified Pinto engines that rev high.

The only thing I have not done is the surround Brumaire has put on his and that would probably saved me money and time because it is a simple easy solution to getting more cool air through the radiator.

Edited by Snapperpaul
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I run a 200 horse red top in a series 7 and the rad is situated behind the cross member with no problems. I did however block all the gaps around the rad so any air going in the nose cone has to go through it. I also put extra vents in the bonnet sides even though it has louvres in it so hot air can exit.  I fitted a header tank to make filling without air pockets easy which works well 

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So I had a good look at the problem at the weekend and discovered the following:

 

 - That tiny fan is indeed wired up backwards and pushing against the airflow🤪  In other words  - it's doing f%^$ all, badly

 - There are gaps around the rad so large that I expected to find a Romanian clinging on for dear life.  Clearly no actual air is hitting the matrix.

IMG_1067.thumb.jpeg.27f924f246226ac56a6444a35fb0ffa7.jpeg

 

 - Previous owner has fabbed their own thermostat housing (see pics) which is a little unorthodox😬, as well as having crazy pipework as pointed out already.  Why on earth wouldn't you just buy a housing?

IMG_1063.thumb.jpeg.aa016f5e7d4cc55ba65bb263a54e04f6.jpeg

 - The thing is plumbed as it should be engine bottom - rad bottom - rad top - engine top.  The hose is brough round the front of the rad to make space for that crazy thermostat housing monstrosity.

 

Questions - 

1:  Any thoughts on how to seal the gaps

2:  Any suggestions on a thermostat housing I can buy.

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Use plastic or aluminium to make a duct that goes around the 4 sides of the radiator and extends forwards as close as you can get them to the opening in the nosecone. This should significantly reduce the air spillage around the rad. This is mine, standard Cortina Coolman rad, 4.6 RV8 - no cooling issues. Most rads are capable of doing the job, the ones that don't generally have poor airflow management through them.

447.jpg

 

That thermostat housing looks like it's just for the fan switch. Carbuilder Solutions will do something neater.

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Actually I think the strange fabrication is a temp sender.  The electric fan is on a switch on the dash rather than thermostatically controlled.  It’s either on all the time, or off.

 

Have just done some searching and found this temp sender adapter which should allow me to straight line the hose from thermostat housing to rad top.  vs. going via somewhere north of Birmingham as it does now.

 

 

 

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Edited by Misternomer
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By moving the radiator into the nose cone would allow you to improve the ducting as Brumster has shown and would also allow a neater solution for your hoses. The existing inline housing could be moved to the top hose as you mentioned earlier. 

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How does this look at a solution.  Moving the water temperature sensor into a neat alloy housing and shortening the house.  Any thoughts on whether it would make sense to add an expansion tank?

Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_11_53_20.thumb.png.65b153361bc8ba65ec9622db2ca31c5f.png

I will also take the nose cone off and see if there is space to put the rad in the cone, but there is some obstruction due to the inboard shocks.

IMG_1073.thumb.jpeg.b63b43ffab34182ef0c11eb44a425b6e.jpeg

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I'd say you've definitely got to do something about the position of that rad and the ability for air to flow through it - it's tight and messy in there, hard to see from photos so apologies if I get it wrong but it looks like there's all manner of things stopping a good passage of airflow, let alone the fact that it's hanging around in open space rather than having anything effectively controlling the air flow through it. Moving it even just the other side of that shock arrangement would allow you to use the nosecone as something to butt panels/ducting up like Richy's lovely arrangement (slightly angling you'll get away with). If I needed to swap to a smaller radiator to get it in there, I'd even do that, sell that massive aftermark ali rad for good money and get a smaller OEM one out of a hatchback/etc. I tell you it'd still have plenty of cooling capacity, people love to think they need massive expensive aftermarket radiators but it's just not necessary when you've got proper, decent airflow through it.

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