Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Henry
The best idea I have for you is this: Drive your car around and get it up to operating temperature and maybe what you think is too hot. Then go home, turn off the engine, then turn the ignition back on so that the temperature gauge will still work, put a rag over the radiator cap and carefully open the radiator cap just enough to let out any pressure that there is. If the water is trying to steam out close the cap. If the pressure is released such that you can finish removing the radiator cap, take it off and insert a liquid thermometer such as your wife might use in the kitchen to make candy into the radiator water and see what temperature it is. You will most likely find it well below 200F. Whatever the temperature is, note that as you look at your temperature gauge in the dashboard and see what it reads corresponding to the temperature on the thermometer. Now you will have a known reference point on your gauge that you know what the water temperature is when the gauge points to that spot. If the temperature is under 200F you're fine. Remember, at your elevation the water is not going to boil out of your engine until it reaches 240F and until it reaches that temperature and actually boils out you have no worries.
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Here is an illustration of what I'm talking about.
I just drove my '47 around enough to warm up the engine. It's 0C (32F) outside but with the thermostats it still warmed up to operating temperature. Then I came home, kept the engine running, opened the radiator cap and stuck my wife's candy thermometer in the radiator. Here's what I got. As you can see, even though my gauge reads almost to 3/4 the actual water temperature is only 60C (140F). That radiator water temperature is probably less than the actual engine temperature because I'm not sure that the engine temperature was hot enough to open the thermostats. If so, then the engine temperature could not be over 70C (160F) because that's the temperature that the thermostats open. But, I think it still shows how the old Ford temperature gauges read hot, that is, they give the impression that the engine is a lot hotter than it really is compared to modern temperature gauges. I believe my temperature gauge is quite accurate because I recently installed a new temperature sending unit in the engine.
If you really want to know how hot your engine is when you think it's too hot you'll need to do this same test so that you'll know and can relax and quit worrying about it.
