Charles, when your car left the factory Ford installed City water and antifreeze. Of course, everything was new, but your car could operate in the Mojave with no problem and with a stock fan and no shroud.

It's all about flow:
Coolant needs to flow through your engine and radiator and air needs to flow around your radiator cores.

Over time and especially if you don't keep up with regular antifreeze flushes, crud settles to the bottom of your block, head gaskets start to open holes around the front cylinder passages, radiators tend to close and so do heater cores. Corrosion can be so bad that your block core plugs will eventually rust through.

If your temp gauge shows 'normal' at highway speeds and elevates at speeds around town, that's a classic example of restricted flow; your water pump isn't pushing enough to flow coolant and/or air isn't going around the cores.

It could be that the pump vanes have eroded and become inefficient at low speeds, or something is restricting flow in the block.

Before adding a six-blade fan and full shroud, I would forward and back flush the block a few times and see what comes out.

These cars were not made to sit with the engine running at 'idle' for long periods of time or they will certainly overheat. Without cooling system improvements (like an electric fan and a good alternator), they cannot do long parades.

Distilled water is good if your water is too hard. Added 50/50 with a good name brand antifreeze, your system should work well. If not, it's time to troubleshoot before temps soar. - Dave

Water Wetter helped me the last few summers; but the temp. problem would still raise its ugly head if the car was sitting still on a hot day. So... I installed an electric fan last Fall.

Late 90's Ford Contour dual fan w/shroud fits the original radiator perfectly. I ran the car in the garage for 30 minutes, and those electric fans weren't even breakin' a sweat.

IF I have ANY more troubles next summer, then I'll know for sure the radiator is the culprit. I see the parts houses have brand-new reproduction copper-core radiators for about 400 bucks. I know my engine block is clean, cuz the 460 was just rebuilt when I bought my car.

you want to run 50/50 water wetter and water ????

the car holds @4 gallons of collant soo 2 gallons of water and 2 gallons of water wetter they sell wetter in a 16 oz bottle for like $10.00 2 gallons would be quite a chunk of change

antifreeze/coolant is @ $8.00 a gallon

i dont think wetter is supposed to be used instead of coolant it is supposed to be used in addition to coolant

have you had your cooling system completely power flushed?

Just one unit of Water Wetter is all you need.

And the more water (instead of antifreeze) you use, the more effective it is.

I was using about 20% anti-freeze, 80% distilled water, plus one bottle of the magical pink elixir (Water Wetter).

Now with my new electric fan, I hopefully wont be too concerned about running hot, no matter what sort of traffic jams I encounter.

I really like my electric fan. It only comes on when needed which saves gas when the engine is cold while the alternator is making up battery juice from starting. Only install an electric fan WITH an alternator large enough to run the fan. The easiest way is to visit the bone yard and pick an alt from a car with an electric fan.

Good (name brand) antifreeze includes two very important ingredients; water pump lubricant and phosphoric acid (to keep your cooling system clean). The acid is a very mild solution but off the shelf, phosphoric acid runs about $8/qt. (I use it all the time to disolve rust as it is environmentally friendly and it leaves a rust-proof film on steel that lasts about a year.)

Folks who don't change coolant should be aware that these important properties disipate after a few years. That's when 'hidden' troubles start. Over many decades, Ford hasn't changed their coolant recommendations because that's what your engine needs. - Dave

What is a "power flush" exactly?

The flushes I have done came down to: drain the coolant from the radiator, put water in, add flush, run for awhile, drain, add water, run and drain again, then finally put the coolant mix back (50-50 in my case).

I was never convinced I drained it all, and I never removed the fittings from the block (near the engine mounts on the 352). So this is a good time for me to learn something; maybe someone else will too.

On the + side I have not had any overheating problems. The block has about 13K miles since rebuild; the radiator was recored at the same time. I have done the above half-***ed job every other year.

I agree with Dave that the cars are not intended from the factory to sit in traffic idling. My only fear is being on a highway, getting off and immediately stuck in traffic with too little air flow.

John

Engine Engineers really go through some hoops trying to get the engine to cool evenly. Did you ever inspect the water holes in a head gasket? They are a lot smaller than the holes in the block or the head.

The idea is to make cool water flow through the front cylinders and continue flowing all the way to the back of the block. We know that water flow takes the path of least resistance, and that the water pump is at the very front of the engine.

Head gasket water holes are completely close up the front, and gradually open more as water gets to the rear cylinders. Once coolant passes through the head gasket it is on its return path to the thermostat. When your engine was rebuilt or factory new, that is how it worked.

If your engine is old and sadly neglected, it rusts from the inside. The head gasket also rusts in and around the water ports. If pieces of rust are pumped with the flow and close the tiny holes, flow stops in that area.

In extreme cases, front cylinder head gasket holes have rusted through causing flow to completely bypass the rear cylinders. Here's an example of my original 1959 Y-block as I just pulled the RH head off, and left the head gasket on the block. The FRONT is to the right:



Look closer:




This thing is a mess. The only cool rear cylinders get is from stagnant liquid, and those cylinders will boil the coolant if the engine creates too much heat. Changing the radiator won't help because the path of engine coolant is shortened.

To answer John's question, a back-and-forth agitation flush needs to be done if rust resides on the top side of your head gaskets. Only then will the small holes unclog. (The same applies to heater cores that are clogged. Flow in one direction, then reverse the flow, back and forth.)

High pressure will damage head gasket holes if they are already thin. It's far better to finesse the situation rather than 'power rod' it. The only time I use high pressure is when the block core plugs are removed and sediment has somewhere to exit. - Dave

Overheating

What I settled on was a mixture of 70% distilled water and 30% coolant along with a bottle of water wetter. I installed a temperature quage and she's running at 162 degrees. But, it's definitely not summer, yet, in Texas so not sure how high she will go then. What temperature is the highest I can let her go without damage to the engine? 200? Thanks.

I would say, if the bottom radiator hose is anywhere close to 180*F, your radiator/fan is not doing its job.

But if the bottom hose is cool and your engine is still overheating, there is an internal flow problem. As shown in my pictures, the front of your engine may be cool while the rear is boiling. It's really important to get that rear heat back up to the thermostat.

Antifreeze has an anti-rust/corrosion ingredient (phosphoric acid). If the concentration is weak or the antifreeze has been in your car for many years, this acid is no longer and your head gasket holes will rust open. Acid works much better when heated. So, if the car has weak antifreeze and left cold (not run often), you get internal rust.

Aluminum/iron engines are even more critical because dissimilar metals create galvanic reaction. Bottom line... change that antifreeze at regular scheduled intervals. It's that simple. - Dave

And only run distilled water.

-Jon in TX.

hot

I just installed a 390 over .030 with edelbrock heads, headers, new 4 core rad, 190 stat, 6 blade flex fan. the beast idles @ 220 all day and runs down the road at 195. I have a electric fan controller that i was going to use with the ford fans ,but this works well...It is all about FLOW, air and water. p.s. anyone wants a good new fan controler cheep, mlmuenchow@gmail.

chech your timming, set at 10 btdc,with the vacume removed and total mechanical set to max at 35 to 37 btdc, all in at 2500 rpms. get it set there then reconnect the vacume line. if you are slow on the timming the beast will run hot!

Yeah! I am VERY interested. I will email you later tonight. - Dave

overheating

Got it.........thanks.

Hmm, so the one freeze plug that I replaced when doing mys suspension work that revealed a nice, thick layer of crud in the block is a very bad sign instead of just a bad sign? I scraped a bunch out, but I only changed the one plug. I'm sure the block has a lot more crud in it.

I've always had issues keeping mine cool but I've been taking short trips, avoiding 65+ MPH and not driving it above 85 degrees so I can keep enjoying it. I don't have the money to do a rebuild and I don't want it to sit for years while I get around to it.

Would a repeated flush really get a lot of this out?