Re: Warmer than norm 4KSQ

[luis@odf.ucsd.edu (Luis Patino)]

I lost my shroud to a nasty radiator shop a year and a half ago. However, 
I noticed no difference for months. Then on a trip form San Diego to Las Vegas
my oil temp shot up to 150 while travelling close to 100 MPH in the hot desert
July night. Because it did so rather suddenly, I stopped in the middle of
nowhere to let it cool and extirpate the thermostat. After doing so, my 4ksq ran
normally. I lost that 'stat without having had a chance to test it, but since
it made a difference I'm sure it had stuck shut. Recently, however, I noticed
that the car had started to run consistently hotter and hotter, and remembering
the cloudy year-old coolant from the 'stat surgery I thought that the darned rad
shop had not used phosphate-free stuff as I had specifically told them. Having
seen a friend's scirocco blow a head gasket from a plugged rad, I decide to 
clean my whole system out. The very powerful acid cleaner by prestone cleared
the sh** out of it, so alhough at first it had seemed to me to have made the
overheating worse (the oil-temp readings are affected by electrical loads:
push in the cigarette lighter and watch the LED jump up 30 degrees), now my
coolant and oil temps are the coolest they've ever been - even without the rad
shroud. Thus, I would suspect the lack of shroud the least. Instead I would 
first check all the entire cooling system for corrosion and leaks and component
failure, and flush, repair and replace whatever needed it ASAP, and always use
phosphate-free antifreeze. If corrosion has clogged your rad, a heavy duty
cleaner may fix it, but in all caution, I hesitate to recommend the prestone 
acid rad cleaner since the acid-base reaction with its neutralizer generates
large amounts of CO2 at pressures high enough to damage something, IMHO. At 
least I will never use it again, since I have learned the hard way to now
maintain the cooling system religiously: bad cooling systems probably destroy
more engines than all the other problems put together.

HTH

-Luis

'85 4ksq
132K miles