Scares the bejeezus out of me. The motor is only partially broken-in, no tuning except for a change of power valve, and the timing is retarded to be safe. At a 30 mph roll it fries the 255 BF Goodrich's up to 6500 rpm (almost 60mph) and breaks 'em loose again in second gear up to 70 mph or so. Shooo weee! Southside Machine Lift Bars help, but traction is still just a dream. Maybe I'll get some drag radials.

Motor is running a bit hot. Slowly gets up to 185-190 on the highway then stays there. In town it has got up to 200 degrees in traffic. Some of you know my block is half full of Hard Blok. I have a 4 core brass radiator, clutch fan, shroud, and Ebok water pump. I have a March underdrive fan pulley, but I am using the factory crank pulley which is bigger (runs water pump faster) than the March crank pulley. Also running a thermostat, I think it's 160 degrees.

Any suggestions for cooling in the Kansas summer?

I could put the March crank pulley on which I think would circulate the water slower. This may be good with the block half-filled as there is less coolant volume in the block. Maybe moving it slower would help transfer more heat? I also have some coolant restrictors I could put in to replace the thermostat and possibly slow down the flow. I have a friend with 650 hp Poncho 455 Hard-Blocked up to the top water pump passage and his cools fine on the street so I know it can be done. He did have to experiment a bit to get the right setupfor his combo, though.

My last 428 stayed at 180 degrees most of the time. It was not Hard-Blocked. It was also fully broken-in and had ceramic coated headers which I think helps. I am going to take my new headers off the motor and have them ceramic coated in the next month or two.

Thanks for any thoughts on cooling.

Paul

Of course, booster fans come to mind. I have a small colletcion of Porsches, and all three of them are water cooled models, two of which rely only on electric fans, and the other (a 928) has a belt driven fan "and" booster fans, the latter of which never seem to come on.

A big aluminum radiator will help bleed off heat. Redline "water wetter" will help a bit.

After break-in, I would call the tech guys at Amsoil, and ask them which one of their Series 2000 synthetic oils will be the best choice for your particular motor. The friction is a LOT less with this stuff, and that means the motor runs cooler. In this sense, you solve the problem by avoiding the problem. Also, their Series 2000 75W90 gear lube, is awesome (voice of experience).

I'd wait until you break in the motor well, on dinosaur oil, which is a phase where it will probably be producing a bit more heat anyway, and then switch to synthetic when you know things are seated and polished in.

Sounds like fun, all the best,

P

......with all that rubber and smell. Have you got an extra electric fan? I took a view on one of those newer Mercedes fans just yesterday. They are huge. Too bad they're expensive. But I'd rather save my $ for one of those than ever hassling w. one of those crappy Mr. Gasket vents.
You might think about an engine oil cooler too. Engine oil is a commonly underestimated engine cooling media.
As for engine paints, a friend of mine once told me that it was konsensus among his racing mates that flat black color all over the entire engine would heat up lesser than other colors.
I believe that you'd be man enough to even pour camel **** over your aluminum bomber if it helped RPM wise LOL.
Take your time to moderately break in your engine in a timely manner.
Glad to hear that it performs so well.
Later

Okay, I put over 100 miles on the new 428. Everything seemed fine. Then it started missing and smoking a bit. I found the two rear plugs fouled. It's also used about 1-1/2 quarts of oil. The break-in smoke had stopped some time before as the rings seated.

I suspected an intake leak so I checked the bolts. 3 of the 4 rear bolts and 1 of the front ones came loose with less than 10 ft/lbs. The other bolts were slightly tighter. Okay, so I thought that must be it. The rear cylinders were sucking oil into the chamber from the valley. Changed plugs and tightened down intake to 30 ft/lbs. Motor starts and has no miss. Still smoking lightly, though. I take the car for a drive and after a few minutes it's really smoking again.

At this point I did a leak down test and compression test on all cylinders.
Leakdown was 3-4% for all cylinders. Sounds great so far. Cranking compression was 185-195 psi on the front 6 cylinders, but 212-215 psi on the rear two cylinders. Kinda weird, but I thought the rear two cylinders might have some oil in them which would affect the cranking compression?? Also, checked valve lash on all cylinders. It was A-OK.

Okay, so now I'm thinking short block is fine and I'm either still getting oil past the intake gasket into the rear cylinders or maybe it's coming down past a valve stem seal. Kinda weird it would happen on the back two cylinders at the same time, but who knows?

I took off the intake expecting to find some tell-tale sign of leakage at the intake gasket and/or in the intake ports. Everything looked fine, though. The gasket was positioned correctly and didn't have any obvious place it was leaking. The cylinder head ports look very clean as does the valve stem. Now I'm confused.

It could be that oil was in fact leaking past the intake gasket, but the only evidence is lightly torqued intake bolts.

Could I have overfilled the oil pan? I put 8 quarts total (7 plus filter)in my Milodon pan. I now think 7 total is correct. Could oil have backed up in the shallow back part of the pan and got into the rear cylinders from below?

Where else could oil be getting into the rear cylinders?

Any thoughts or ideas appreciated,

Paul

first, heat is normal in a fresh engine but retarding the timing makes it worse. as far as oil in the rear cylinders, my first thought is did you instal restrictors for the rockers? a high volume pump can fill the valve cover with oil faster than it can drain and the rear cylinder valve stem seals usually end up under oil. also putting the rocker shafts in upside down will do this (oil holes go down and do not use shafts with oil holes on both sides, very bad!!!). then i read the part about the intake manifold bolts being loose, i'll bet you got those felpro instant fail printoseal gaskets that trash themselves the minute you fire the engine! on the other Fe forum this gets a lot of airplay, here is one thread but there are many more: http://www.network54.com/Forum/thread?forumid=74182&messageid=1070604627 hope this helps, hawkrod

Hawkrod

39 Ford Deluxe Coupe
59 Tbird 430
60 Lincoln Premier
(2)62 Tbirds
(3)68 Cougar XR7-G's
69 Cougar 428CJ 4 speed
77 1/2 Ford F250 4X4 w/460 swap
86 SVO mustang

look at my cars past and present at superford!

from a blank. The gaskets he made look like a rubber material. After taking the intake off they look fine.

I am going to look at the exhaust ports next. Maybe the exhaust valve stem seals failed. So I am going to pull the back two header tubes this weekend and have a look-see.

Thanks for the advice,

Paul

Nothing crazy. I don't think that was contributing much to the marginally hot motor. More likely, as you said, it was the new engine breaking-in, also the uncoated headers,the higher compression ratio, and the Kansas heat.

I say the timing was retarded because on my last 428 I ran 16 initial and 41 total degrees timing. It liked 45 degrees total best on the dyno. However that motor was only 9.3:1 compression. New motor is 10.5:1

Paul

but sorry about the smoking problem. If the oil is getting to both rear cylinders it would seem to point to oil pooling in the back of the heads and getting down the valve stems if your intake is sealing ok. Just make sure the imprint of the intake on the old gasket is even all around the port. Are you using iron or Edel heads? I think the early Edel heads had a problem with the oil drain holes and the newer ones are better. They look more like the iron head drain holes. Some people had to modify the older Edel heads for better drainage. What kind of valve seals are you using? I know a lot of people will disagree with this but I don't think the teflon PC type seals work well on a street car but ok on a race car. Under high vacuum like cruise or idle, too much oil gets sucked down the stem. I never had any luck with them. Might be ok with really tight guide of stem clearance, though. I always had too much oil going down the valve even with brand new heads (iron). Just switched to viton seals from Manley which look like the PC seals but made of viton rubber. No problems since. Here's a little info on them.
http://www.lazercams.com/CamTables.html
Whether or not they will work if they are swimming in oil I can't say but they seal better than the teflon ones for me. As for restrictors, I have messed around with a lot of different sizes and don't know where the popularity of .06-.09 head restrictors came from. If you look at a lot of posts on this you'll probably see that a lot of guys use .060 or so restrictors and still see too much oil to the head. The restrictors aren't really restrictors yet. The limiting factor still is the tightness of the fit of the rockers and the oil getting out of the oil ports of the rockers for the pushrod end and valve stem if they are present. I have HS rockers with pretty tight clearances on the shaft and I didn't see any change until I went down to around .04. I even tried .03 and had enough oil but I got kind of chicken to use such a small restrictor and decided on .04 and the oil level on my iron head is below the level of the valve cover gasket and reaches the gasket when the oil is cold with the engine idling at about 1200 rpm. I figure that is sufficient oil.
Sorry for the long post and hope you fix the smoking problem soon. Good luck.

Hey all!

Just thought I'd give y'all an update on the 428. I couldn't find anything wrong that would cause oil consumption on the rear two cylinders. After reading what Hawkrod said and many more old posts on the new forum I would have to agree that my valve covers were probably flooding with oil. I also think I overfilled my oil pan which may have caused some issues, too.

So I got some rocker arm restrictors from Gessford Racing. Those are in the head now. I am also going to drain the oil and put a quart or two less in. (6 or 7)

Bad news is I was putting the intake back on and I stripped one of the intake bolt holes. It was the front passenger side. I torqued it in steps up to 32 ft/lbs. It let go on the last step. Well, I obviously shouldn't have torqued it that far with an aluminum head. Good news is there is allot of thread left deeper in the head. I have a longer bolt and will try that. That also makes me think my original bolt was a bit short and not engaging enough threads in the head. Anyway I will put the intake back on and torque it down to a lesser spec.

What do you all think is appropriate with alloy heads?
25 ft/bs? 28 ft/lbs.?

Thanks for all the help with this. The 428 should be fired up again in the next week or two.

Paul

x

Just my 2 cents here. I was having the same problem with my 390 Mach 1 getting hot. I had in a 180 degree thrermostat. It ran fine on the highway, as soon as I got in town it would go over toward HOT, radiator would boil over, etc. So, I finally put in a 160 degree thermostat and it seemed to fix the problem pretty much. You wouldn't think 20 deg. on a thermostat would do that much but it did. My car has air so we put on 2 electric fans on the front (one 8" and one 10") to help with the cooling. Stays REAL cool now, even with the air on it only went up half way on the temp. gauge. Personally I think boring the engine didn't help it any (+.060).

Now if the air would just work right (evaporator leaks, and it's a reconditioned one from Classic Auto Air, grrrrrr), gets damn hot in the car, all that heat from that big engine has to go someplace I guess, lol.

Scott

the thermostat could be the problem new or old sometimes they just don't work very well or not at all-- also is it a hi flow or a standard one with the much smaller outlet---one part you shouldn't try to save a buck on concidering what it can ruin another point could be air flow--radiator to core support--support to hood at slow or no speed the air can be pulled back around and recirculated rather than pushed down and around the motor and headers ect.--hood open or off does it stay cool then---i had to do a cut out behind the shock towers in my fairlane to get enough air flow---ray

Paul,

The 160F Thermostat is surely staying open all the time and this does not allow the radiator time to exchange heat from the water. Try a 180 F Thermostat and drill a two 1/8 inch holes in the perimeter. The 180 F may be high enough to allow a better heat exchange. I had a similar problem with my 67 GT-500 and it went away with this simple change. Post back if you try it and it works for you too.

Chip

If you put that motor together correctly and have all of your bolts torqued to specs. You should have no problem with your motor running up to 230 deg. Hell with most motors today, v-8's included, the coolant fan (for cars with them) and clutch fan, don't even start working properly until 220 to 230 deg. F.. If the temp she run's at in traffic isn't to your liking, put in a 180 thermostat and drill a couple 1/8th inch holes in it for flow and see what you get like was said in an earlier post. But you shouldn't have any woe's about running at 200 or so. Just be sure to never run her at more than 260, unless you want to resurface you heads and change gaskets.
Good luck and keep that FE Burning!!!

you can try to put some watter wetter in the coolant or beleive it or not some fabric softner
The fabric softner will help cool the motor by about 10 degrees
about a half of cup to a cup will work plus you will get a nice smell from you coolant system

If you are not running a vacuum advance
dist. the car will run hot.Too much heat
stays in the engine @ low speeds. Don't
ask me how I know-but this made the biggest
difference on my 69 Mach 1 428CJ.I did all
the aforementioned tricks first. You won't
read this in any hot rod books either.
Good luck, Steve