Well, I have to jump in here as the contratian. My 250 has an engine with
about 10K miles. It is in good shape as indicated by a leak-down test and
the way it runs.
Before last winter, it ran a bit over 1/3 on the temp gauge under normal
conditions and a bit over 1/2 while idling in really hot weather. After last
winter, the temp was running about 1/2 at speed and much hotter at idle.
What happened last winter? Why, a hotter cam and increased compression.
I tweaked the timing but could not get it to run in a comfortable range. The
solution was for me to get my radiator re-cored to a 4 row (I think stock
was 3 row). This helped a lot.
I know I'm not the only one with this problem. It seems that some of the
cars are fine with a stock rad and some need additional help.
Peter
'68 TR250
on 3/8/03 8:19 PM, David Friedlander at forzion@maine.rr.com wrote:
> Thanks, Dick, just as I thought. Can't understand why re-coring costs
> more than a new stock radiator but life is full of mysteries, no? I
> had also been curious if running a tweaked engine would cause the
> radiator
> to be stressed in normal operation. Guess that, even if that was true, I
> could
> always add an electric fan later.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Dave Friedlander
> '74 TR6
>
> Sally or Dick Taylor wrote:
>
>> Dave---There's nothing wrong with the capacity of the stock radiator,
>> under most conditions.
>>
>> I went with the 7 lb. cap years ago after a bout of blowing heater
>> control valves. This was about 15 years ago. No problems with
>> overheating with the lesser cap. Or heater valve.
>>
>> Dick
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