Wow, Theo;
I really have a situation here. Thanks for the education.
I think I will take your advice and send off an e-mail to Stewart
Cooling.
I will get back to the you and the list when I have an answer.
Best regards,
Dave
Subject: RE: [Fwd: Re: Tiger Temp] UPDATE
Hi Dave,
As I understand it, without that hose, there's basically no coolant
circulation through the block and heads at all until the thermostat
opens.
And without circulation, the water that's being heated in the heads
won't
make it to the thermostat until things have gotten VERY hot. Also, the
inlet
side of the water pump will be operating at a very low pressure until
the
thermostat opens - you might end up collapsing the inlet hose, or else
you'll suck the thermostat open due to the pressure differential. The
low-pressure zones behind the impeller vanes might also cause cavitation
damage to the pump. I've never tried blocking the bypass, so I don't
know if
any of these theoretical considerations would actually come to pass, but
I
don't think that it's a good idea to block it completely. What you could
try
is to put a flow restrictor in - you could reduce the hole diameter in
the
small thermostat housing hole by 20 percent, which would reduce its area
to
about 2/3 of what it was, and that would cut the bypass flow
significantly.
I suppose the best idea would be to have a pressure-relief valve in
there so
that the bypass would be open when the thermostat was closed, and then
the
bypass could shut off once the thermostat opens up... But I've never
seen
such a thing, so either that's impractical, or else there are good
reasons
not to do it.
Hopefully you'll get a better answer from some of the other list
members. I
do know that 170 degrees is kind of on the low side for the Ford engine,
and
if you have no thermostat then that temperature will go all over the map
depending on the ambient conditions. It would be way better to have a
steady
200 to 210 degrees (even 220, if you have sufficient cooling system
pressure), than to be running things too cold and at varying
temperatures.
You could try to post a question to the guys at Stewart cooling systems
-
they have a very good FAQ on their website, and maybe they could give
you
some definite answers on a topic such as this.
Best regards,
Theo
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