with this talk of cooling problems cropping up again, i thought i should
offer my feedback on the recovery bottle that i enquired about last month.
you may remember, a little over a month ago, just before i set out on the
london to casablanca, i mailed the list about people's experiences with
recovery bottles. i only had a couple of days before leaving, so i hacked
up a solution by sealing the header tank overflow pipe through the top of a
750ml cycle water bottle, reaching down to the bottom of the bottle. i
added another tube drawing from near the top and running down, out the front
of the car. the plastic bottle was then wedged, upright between the header
tank and the fan shroud where it stayed put for 8000km.
the header tank was filled right to the top and about 100ml more added to
the recovery bottle which soon got sucked in. for the entire event, (with
one exception) i added no water to the recovery bottle or the header tank.
we ran all over the morocco from sea level to just under 8000ft and from
cold weather to temps over 120F.
on one occasion, we drove a special stage starting at the edge of the sahara
at over 120F air temp, up a mountain to 7900F for about 25 minutes all
between 4500 and 6000rpm. when we reached the top and stopped at the time
control, the recovery bottle starting dripping coolant onto the road. we
then had to pull in and wait about 20 minutes for all the other cars to get
to the top before we could go back down the only road up. while we were
stopped, it spewed out about 1.5 litres coolant (at quite a ferocious rate
at one point!) in about 5 minutes. the water temp was reading about 240F at
this point. then as it cooled it sucked the contents of the bottle back in
and i just had to unscrew the top and pour a bottle of water in which was
greedily sucked back into the header tank. 10 minutes later, on schedule,
we drove off with normal temps. it was great to be able to add water with
the system still under pressure.
that was the only time the capacity of the bottle was not enough - it would
often fill half the the bottle of so when stopped and then pull it back in.
other than on this occasion the temperature would barely budge above 190F
and there were similar special stages with perhaps just 10F cooler air
temps.
for those who are interested, the rest of my cooling system is as follows:
- stock brass radiator
- 192F thermostat
- stock volume aluminium 260 water pump
- horn holes blocked
- 13" flex fan on the engine - no electric fan
- stock fan shroud
- gaps at top and bottom (between crossmember and rad) of rad filled with
stickyback foam strip
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