10-03-2012, 05:35 AM
My 1970 Mach 1 overheats when sitting in traffic or after exiting the freeway. If I'm driving it seems fine. I've replaced the radiator, clutch and fan, 180* thermostat, hoses, temp sending unit and checked that the gauge is accurate with an infrared heat gun. The gauge sits in the middle with the heat gun reading around 185-195. Once it gets up to the H the car starts to stall and it boiled over once. The heat gun reads around 235-240 on the intake manifold at this point. So the gauge seems pretty accurate.
I can idle on the side of the road for about 45 minutes before it gets overly hot, less if I run the A/C. This makes me think the thermostat and water pump are working properly as I assume it would overheat much faster if the water wasn't flowing well.
I took it to a specialty shop today and spoke with the owner. He said i've done most of the easy stuff that usually fixes the small problems. There are a few minor "outer" things he will check like the exhaust and hoses, stuff like that. After that it gets expensive and involves taking the engine out and working on that. Sometimes they find the problems, sometimes not. He's had a couple clients where they just couldn't find out what the problem was. One guy decided to live with it and another guy had them put in a whole new engine.
He said if they ended up having to get into the engine and tearing it apart it'd probably be around 12-15 hours for labor. Then parts on top of that; plus the charge for the machine shop if they need to do any actually milling on the engine. So likely $1500-$2000. Or they might find something simple is plugged up and could fix it in a couple hours. He just can't say ahead of time.
So, my question to you guys is have I missed anything "simple" that I can do myself before resorting to taking the engine out? I've been given suggestions of putting in electric fans, though that seems more of a 'masking the problem' type fix. Any help would be great as trying to fix this problem is starting to push me over my budget.
I can idle on the side of the road for about 45 minutes before it gets overly hot, less if I run the A/C. This makes me think the thermostat and water pump are working properly as I assume it would overheat much faster if the water wasn't flowing well.
I took it to a specialty shop today and spoke with the owner. He said i've done most of the easy stuff that usually fixes the small problems. There are a few minor "outer" things he will check like the exhaust and hoses, stuff like that. After that it gets expensive and involves taking the engine out and working on that. Sometimes they find the problems, sometimes not. He's had a couple clients where they just couldn't find out what the problem was. One guy decided to live with it and another guy had them put in a whole new engine.
He said if they ended up having to get into the engine and tearing it apart it'd probably be around 12-15 hours for labor. Then parts on top of that; plus the charge for the machine shop if they need to do any actually milling on the engine. So likely $1500-$2000. Or they might find something simple is plugged up and could fix it in a couple hours. He just can't say ahead of time.
So, my question to you guys is have I missed anything "simple" that I can do myself before resorting to taking the engine out? I've been given suggestions of putting in electric fans, though that seems more of a 'masking the problem' type fix. Any help would be great as trying to fix this problem is starting to push me over my budget.