Winter temperatures

[Mathew Rimmer]

Am sure its as cold in the UK as it is here at the moment, so I'm not the only one with this problem;

 

Oil temp/water tem ususally tied at around 80 degrees in "normal" weather as per Caterham guages. Have a laminova but am currently seeing approx 70 degrees water and 50 ? degrees oil (difficult to be precise). Air temps are circa freezing during daytime (but dry and bright -ideal blatting weather !!)

 

Am tempted to try somehow blocking some of the radiator but given that water temp is down, I wonder if the radiator is actually being used in any case ?

 

Don't want to give the car full beans with those temperatures, suggestions welcome........

 

(if blocking the radiator is a good idea, then top or bottom ? and what with !)

 

thanks

 

 

[Bricol]

Sounds like your stat has failed. Blocking rad works temporaily - until you sit in traffic or temps go up.

 

Both cat and integrale running at perfectly normal operating temps - and ambient temps around here early in morning are pretty low . . .

 

Bri

[Rob Walker]

block off bottom half of nose cone with duct tape. Even with reduced air flow I doubt you will see much above 50c on oil temps

 

Edited by - Rob Walker on 23 Nov 2005 20:53:45

[Golf Juliet Tango]

I asked Ratrace about this because with an ali rad there is too much cooling and I get nothing from the heater! They said "Fine, you can mask off some of the grill. Try out variations to see how much the temp rises."

Look at how the London Cabbies use old copies of their encapsulated rate cards to keep the temp of their oil burners - it covers about 80% of the grill.

[Shaun_E]

I don't understand this - surely if you've got a thermostat then there should be no need to block off part of the radiator as water won't be flowing through it. If it gets hot enough to open the thermostat then the water will just cool more quickly and the thermostat will close again.

I have done several long journeys in the last week with the low ambient temperatures and the oil has been around 60 degrees and the water a steady 70 degrees. As soon as I slowed down, the water temperature rises fairly quickly and the thermostat opens to reduce it again. When stopped in traffic it rises to the point that the fan cuts in. This would all seem to be the designed behaviour. I think that the really low ambient temperatures just produce lots of cooling of the block and in fact the thermostat rarely opens when driving at speed.

The heater works even when the thermostat is not open so if your heater isn't providing any heat, then either it's broken or your thermostat is broken. Bear in mind that at speed, the heater is pretty ineffective anyway as the warm air is rapidly sucked out of the cockpit faster than the heater can replace it - when you are stationary or driving slowly it works fine.

 

Yellow SL #32