Modified Cooling System

[at the beach]

I'm prepping a Tiger for a long August road trip.

It doesn't run an expansion tank and is equipped with a large Aluminum two row single pass radiator and a stock water pump. The horn holes have been blocked.
With traditional 50/50 water coolant it ran much too cold at cruising speeds even with a thermostat. It has idled for a half hour in over 100 degree heat.

I've decided to try an experiment and install Evans waterless coolant which is mainly propylene glycol. I have serious doubts that this will work well but I'm willing to try new things. Maybe I'll get lucky. However, in the spirit of trying to not reinvent the wheel, has anyone had experience with Evans in a Tiger?

Buck

 

[0neoffive]

Say What ??

Hey Buck: T-stat controls head temp. all be it flexible with RPM & load. Suggest replacing same and/or checking the accuracy of the gauge. I normally run 180 deg.F units except for the higher modified motors which we start at a lower 165 deg.F . . . . . .Sounds like you have the opposite problem the rest of us deal with.

 

[67 Tiger]

40 Below

I used to use this stuff in my Motorhome, Works Great!
https://keysermanufacturing.com/product/40-below-radiator-treatment-16-oz/

 

[gregory schumacher]

Evens

We run Evans in our tiger with a 507hp boss 363 horn holes blocked. Using a griffins radiator with no overheating problems. Evens wont boil until 375 degrees . Our tiger is direct port fuel injected and thermostat is 195 unit so temp stays right around 200 .

 

[at the beach]

Thanks for the great info.

Your pressurized fuel injection won't be susceptible to carb bowl percolation which is one of my worries.

Any idea how long you can idle when stopped with your hood closed?

Also, what are you running for a front cover and water pump?

thanks,
bt

 

[gregory schumacher]

The timing cover is a 1978 and the water pump is an edelbrock hi flow. Opening the naca ducts allows the hot air to escape the engine bay. As for how long the car can idle in traffic remains to be seen. Temps are in the mid 70s right now. We also have a 1500cfm Hayden pusher fan for backup manually switched. using the handheld for the injection temps can be monitored and the tiger gauge shows 9 degrees hotter than what the ecu receives. If your traveling long distances overheating shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Hoghead]

Thanks for the great info.


Also, what are you running for a front cover and water pump?

thanks,
bt

Other than open or closed back water pumps, are not all covers equal in efficiency?
Which type of water pump is preferred?

I am determined to conquer the cooling problem this time around

 

[at the beach]

Water Pump

Which type of water pump is preferred?

My preference is one that fits.

My stock Tiger front cover requires an open back pump. As I recall those were all made in aluminum.

You could change the front cover and use the later cast iron closed back kind but my guess is that could mess with the rest of the belt alignments, not to mention fan-to-belt and fan-to-radiator clearances. That seems to be what Greg has done and he's got it to work.

As I wrote previously, what I already have for cooling works great. As Randy pointed out I'm having the opposite problem from typical Tigers. I'm running too cold with a water and anti-freeze mix. I'm just doing a bit of experimenting to gain some additional knowledge and maybe tweak it to be a bit better. Then I plan to verify what I've done on that very long road trip I've already mentioned.

And Randy's point about gauge accuracy is excellent. When I started this, it was one of the first things I checked. The gauge was reading 40° too high. So I added some resistance and have the gauge now reading 5° too high.

As to Greg's opening the LAT NACA ducts, I've already found that the existing LAT ducts turn the vents in MK1As & MK2s into truly excellent under-dash heaters. My feet are always warm in a Tiger. But the combination of the hood vents and air vents seems to turn "toast" into "toasted" :-( So I'll probably leave my cowl vents closed. Instead I plan on building some of lexan wind diverters that clip on the wind wing which Mike Michels invented and wrote about a year or two ago in Tiger Tales.

I'll probably test some other ventilation ideas as well along the way.

bt
at the beach

 

[at the beach]

EVANS Waterless Coolant

As I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, I had a very efficient cooling system in my Tiger. With a stock type pump with the stamped sheet metal 6 vane impeller and a coolant mix of propylene glycol and water, after driving hundreds of miles in 104 degree heat we once had to idle for a half hour. It got up to 210. With a 160 degree thermostat it ran about 170 at cruise. (This was with a 13" flex fan and no shroud.) I wanted the engine to run hotter. Before installing a higher thermostat I saw this as an opportunity to experiment.

We installed Evans Coolant. It's waterless. As I hoped, it ran warmer. However I lost the ability to idle (more or less indefinitely). It percolated the fuel in the bowl after idling only 20 minutes.

As an additional experiment, we then replaced the water pump with one from FlowKooler. (We also put in a 180 degree thermostat.) The new water pump definitely cooled better than the stock version, and idling time increased to nearly a half hour but not close to the indefinite capability I once had. This is a disadvantage if we get stuck idling in a construction zone or in heavy traffic.

The advantage of Evans is that since it boils at 375 it doesn't rely on pressure the way water based solutions do. The lack of pressure with Evans would be less stressful on things like our heater cores or expansion tanks. Some Evans users talk about using a one to three pound radiator caps.

So, at this point in the experimental process, the FlowKooler water pump gets a big thumbs up.

But the jury is still out on the Evans.

Buck,
at the beach