K series engine temperatures

[tiptree]

Sunday was an excellent day for a drive down to the south coast from Essex, so off I went to Brighton to watch the Mini club run. 1.4kSS ran beautifully except once I reached Brighton and sat in traffic, temperature went over 100 even with heater on and fan blasting hot air enough to give me heat rash. I chickened out, did a u-turn and drove off in the other direction just to let it cool down a bit. At motorway speeds on the way home with the heater right off, temp stayed around 100.

 

Isn't this all a bit hotter than it should be or do they all run at that in summer?

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow's a good day for it!

 

Edited by - tiptree on 20 May 2002 08:44:22

 

Edited by - tiptree on 20 May 2002 08:44:54

[felix.klauser]

Is the main (radiator) cooling fan coming on? Check for that first.

[tiptree]

Felix, thanks for the thought, yes it does - and it has a quick effect too but at those temperatures yesterday, it wasn't having much effect. I would have expected it to stay on all the time while I was sitting in traffic on the front at Brighton, not sure if it did or not.

 

 

 

Tomorrow's a good day for it!

[tiptree]

Probably a good lesson here: I just used the "SEARCH" facility at the top of the page and found out loads more about k supersport temperatures. Regular users of this site must get bored stiff by people like me asking questions that have been asked a hundred times before!

 

So does anyone else use a manual over-ride swtich for the fan and how did you wire it please?

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow's a good day for it!

[felix.klauser]

It wasn't *that* hot yesterday. If you have a problem now it will be far worse when it's 25 deg C or more with the sun heating up the tarmac as you sit in traffic. If this hot running is a recent phenomenon then something has changed in the cooling system; I would find that and fix it rather than just making the radiator fan run more. When was the coolant last changed? Is it translucent or has it gone cloudy and contaminated? The K series seems to like only one or two particular brands of coolant with the rest causing erosion of the cylinder head over the long term; check the archives. Is there an air-lock in the cooling system? (The K series is notorious for this.) When you take the expansion bottle cap off (very slowly and carefully!!) is there pressure in the system? Lack of pressure *could* be from a leaking head gasket.

 

 

[John Howe]

I'd go along with Felix's thread... why should it change - what has happened in the cooling system. There must be a cause, assuming you are not losing coolant.

 

Why not wash it out, refill with "Rover" anti-freeze and Redline water wetter - that assumes you are happy that the sender is not the problem - and see if you still have a problem.

 

JH

 

JH

 

 

[tiptree]

Thanks all. I've not driven the car in traffic or on a motorway for a 100+ mile run hot weather until yesterday so the short answer is, I don't know. Caterham supplied the car and serviced it less than 2,000 miles ago. It loses no coolant and there are no signs of gasket problems at all, coolant looks as it should.

 

Having read the threads I found through "search", temperatures of 100 are not uncommon for k series engines. I just thought that was too hot for comfort. Not sure where you were yesterday, but in Brighton it was surprisingly warm, certainly over 20degs.

 

Logic tells me that changing to an 82 thermostat from 88 won't help in this case unless the gauge is wildly out. I'm having the car serviced again in a couple of weeks so I'll get it all checked through then.

 

When all's said and done it never actually went into the red, so I could be over-reacting to this. Thanks anyway!

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow's a good day for it!