[72c20customcamper]

Originally Posted by mr48chev

Again, an honest answer to his question rather than evasive wiggling around it would help.

230/240 might be hot on that engine. There are a lot of 350 Chevy Small blocks that come with a 205 thermostat and happily and efficiently run in their original installation but let some clown put one in an old car or old truck and he craps his pants because OMG it gets more than three degrees over the rating of the thermostat he put in the engine.

Water boils at 212 degrees, Each pound of pressure on the cap raises the boiling point 2 degrees, the percentage of antifreeze raises the boiling point even more. If that truck isn't puking coolant out of the overflow and out of the beer bottle onto the ground it isn't running hot. it is just running a bit hotter than you think it should because you have an older truck rather than a new truck.

Spal fans may not be an automatic improvement over any other fan, if you study their catalog you can have several units of the same size fan with greatly different CFM ratings. They are good reliable fans but just because it is a ___ inch Spal fan doesn't mean that it pulls the same air as another same diameter Spal fan. That is especially true with the 16 inch.

I've found in Chevy trucks that off brand temp sending units won't read correctly at times. I had to take what ever was in my 454 and replace it with the correct Delco sending unit.

Pertronix distributors and ignition aren't happy unless you run exactly the setup Pertronix tells you to verbatim. There is no mixing and matching other parts to a Pertronix distributor, you have to have their designated coil and every other piece they say to run.

Hard to crank when the engine is warm/hot. Those little skinny l12 V battery cables that you buy at the parts house just flat don't carry enough amps. Switching from 4 gauge to 1 gauge battery cables makes a serious difference in that department.

A heat shield on the starter also helps quite a bit.

I went the full nine yards on both my 71 and 77 and have the Ford Solenoid conversion on both. It took all three things to cure the 454's hot crank issues. That truck wouldn't crank over when it was hot but if you parked it where there was enough slope in the lot that it would roll at all you could clutch start it with if it was moving.

Still, Exactly how hot is that engine running exactly? 210/215 is just operating temp and not hot.

210 to 215 in the head is normal as far as I'm concerned . If you compare the actual water temp at the radiator there can be a 10 to 15 differential. My big block runs at 195 to 205 in the head all day long ambient air temps above 80 without the fans coming on assuming im moving the fans come on aroung 210 in traffic , the water temp will be 195 kick off is 185

I had asked if the truck was puking antifreeze early in the thread never got a response .