overheating

[transparentdsm]

a motorad from oreilly, it brought my normal driving temps down like 5 degrees.

 

[theevozero]

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hsugh.gifMLS are really picky about surface prep. But 11k seem proven enough. How's your tune? A faulty tune can blow a fire ring. I'm not placing blame or anything, just brain storming.

 

[marvinmadman]

Did you get the expensive one? There is 2 different ones. Expensive one has a bigger valve that flows more coolant. It will do exactly as yours if you got the cheaper unit.

 

[transparentdsm]

A/F are 14.5-15.1 while crusing and even when i go up the hills its like 13.6 and i dont WOT the car because that part of the tune isn't finished. my cable went bad and i had to send it back. my dad also said something about the elevation change, maybe i need to add more fuel to the car for when im at 7000 feet

 

[transparentdsm]

and yes i got the thermostat with the larger opening.

 

[transparentdsm]

im really starting to think its the civic half rad. i might try to switch to a stock VR4 rad and see if it changes. im thinking there isnt enough room for coolant to flow through in the half rad for the elevation changes i make.

 

[marvinmadman]

FWIW I had a civic half radiator in my 90 civic with a b16 and it ran hot.

 

[theevozero]

Did you buy it used? is it possible that its plugged internally? I've seen head gasket "repair" in a bottle collect in a radiator and harden. If that were the case, you would be able to feel cool spots on the radiator.

 

[transparentdsm]

nope its a brand new rad.

im really under the assumption that the rad isn't large enough to flow when i reach higher elevation. i think the amount of fluid that runs through the rad is to small, so once it dumps all the coolant from the rad through the thermostat it gets all of the normal temp coolant out, but the thermostat stays open and allows the hot coolant from the block to flow straight through the rad and into the thermostat housing causing the car to overheat?

its a question/comment because im really not sure if this^ actually makes sense.

 

[marvinmadman]

Is the radiator an eBay aluminum unit? The stock Del Sol dual pass unit cools better than those. I found out the hard way.

 

[transparentdsm]

yeah ebay rad... well like its been said and i have said many times before, you get what you pay for. thankfully this isnt a big deal and it only take like 20 minutes to change out radiators. i took a shot and hit my self in the foot. i needed to replace my radiator anyway and i wanted to do the half rad so i thought why not now. it was 20 dollars cheaper then the stock oem one i can get, so i figured why not. oh well. now i will be putting my slightly leaking unit back in today to see if it helps any and if it does i will be buying an OEM one.

 

[marvinmadman]

2x the surface area is definitely gonna help.

 

[Number680]

A lot of people seem to not like the Civic half radiators. I'm wondering if the all aluminum eBay radiators (full size) are worth buying.

 

[theevozero]

I have one in my car. It did not fit when I bought it. I have to cut and weld the mounting tabs on the bottome 1/4" closer to each other and the fan switch bung had to be tapped to a larger size.

 

[transparentdsm]

i put the stock one back in and im fine. so im buying a new oem one. i just took the top mounting bracket for the stock rad and bolted it to the stock driver side bottom mount and it happened to fit the civic rad perfect. it was two bolts and adding the bottom bushing back in and putting it back to stock. i didnt have to cut, weld or mod anything.