Cooling problems, 85 Caterham crossflow

[Richard Gibson]

I have a 85 Caterham crossflow sprint that runs between 90 and 115. In my Elan the motor runs at 90. I noticed in the restoration '7' book, there is a radiator in 86-7 that is placed before the frame, where as mine is placed behing the frame. I assume I need to upgrade, but wanted info on this from any other people that have shared my situation. And then, Does the upgrade work well???? Thanks, Richard Gibson.

 

Richard Gibson

[Graham Perry]

Cooling the crossflow has always been a problem. The most important thing is to ensure that you have a 4 row deep radiator on your car. I am not sure when Caterhams introduced it but it may have been at the time the rad was repositioned to the front of the chassis. Additionally many people wire in a manual overide for the fan so that you can turn it on yourself and anticipate an overtemperature situation ie a traffic jam ahead. Another trick is to plum in a header tank near the bulkhead which also helps the cooling and stops the car dumping all the water in the vacinity of the thermostat onto the road down the overflow pipe and finally if you really want to spend money, an aluminium 4 row radiator cools better than the standard one.

[c831gkl]

Mine's an '86 x/flow and I've experienced similar problems (yup, that was me on the side of the road on the way back from Le Mansblush.gif).

 

I too recognise the need for some kind of replacement but am not sure how to proceed.

 

Has anyone actually done the conversionquestion.gif, any info would be gratefully recieved by myself also.

 

The cash I saved on my new wheels (thanks Rob) is burning a hole in my pocket, I'm thinking it's probably best spent stopping something else getting too hot.

 

 

 

Kevin Thomas

kevin.thomas@bigfoot.com

[Pierson Broome]

My '87-chassis de-Dion has a '95 x/flow courtesy of Roger King and hence, is making c.165bhp at the flywheel. It's never needed much additional cooling, the thermostat cutting in at 90 degrees as normal, but the car did have the un-cowled fan which sat some way behind the radiator (I've seen larger fan blades on balsa wood aeroplanes...). In preparation for the recently-completed Swiss 20th Anniversary trip I upgraded to the cowled fan which sits all but on the radiator, and this worked admirably even on Alp mountain passes with some, ahem, 'enthusiastic' driving between hairpins whilst blowing away some of the many, many bikes which get in the way....

 

James Whiting did the work on my car - bear in mind that on a '87 chassis the radiator had to be angled more to the upright to accommodate the (very thin) fan cowling in front of the front anti-roll bar - two machined bobbins did the trick - but everything else including wiring was recycled. All in all, very successful and good peace of mind.

[Richard Gibson]

To rectify my cooling problem, I purchased a radiator from my 7 dealer that is about 4 inches thick, compared to 2 inches (which came with the car). Difference is that it mounts in front of the frame, opposed to the old one which tucked in behing the front of the frame. Needed to weld 4 mounts on, new fan, new hoses. Will let you know results since weather hits 95 degrees (F) regularily here in Washington DC.

 

Richard Gibson