By Rick Webster

5 Steps to a Cooler Running Engine

Summer's here and it's a relentless one at that. Old Mother Nature's cranking up the global oven to a cozy broil. Bottom line, it's just plain hot! Heck, Tarzan's probably rethinking that whole fur thong thing he's wearing right about now. At 220 plus degrees Fahrenheit, the innards of any V8 are probably thinking the exact same thing.

Here's our situation. We've had an overheating problem in our Toyota Land Cruiser for some time and it just seems to keep getting worse each year. This year we decided to do something about it (finally). We tried about 5 different things and we'll be telling you what actually worked, what didn't work and more. From the mild to the wild, you'll be in the know and your engine will be thanking you.

Here's our setting. About 4 years ago we transplanted a fuel injected, Chevy V8 and a Turbo 350 tranny into da Cruiser. Keeping the OEM radiator that had been cored twice; we hoped that it would be enough. Initially it was, but after some time, and the installation of an aftermarket tranny cooler (one that bolts to the radiator) the motor would overheat at idle or during slow off-roading adventures. It seemed the V8's standard-duty, clutch fan just wasn't enough, so we swapped in a super-heavy-duty one. The swap was successful at keeping the rig cool, but the sound was absolutely deafening.

After a few weeks, we just couldn't bear it anymore, so we figured the next logical step would be to install a high-performance, electric puller fan in place of the clutch unit. Our assumption was that the electric fan would move more air at idle than the clutch fan would, and at speed the amount of air moving through the radiator would cool the mill sufficiently. However, the advice of some of our colleagues proved true and it just didn't work. We did like the small boost in power that we got from removing the oh-so-loud clutch fan and the fact that we could actually carry on a conversation without screaming was definitely a bonus. So, we found ourselves back to square one again and that leads us to where we are now… writing an article on how to keep your rig running cool. In this article, we'll tell you about 5 tricks that you can do yourself to keep your mill running right at the suggested operating temperature.

In the following paragraphs, we'll tell you what we did, if it was a mild or a wild fix, what kind of temperature savings we netted and the approximate cost for doing so. Each of the items and tricks we tested were performed in various settings to ensure that we could adequately measure a fair temperature change. Some tests required us to reinstall the OEM radiator while others required us to simply disconnect our electric fan. Overall, we feel that the measurements we gathered are as accurate as possible, but your gains or losses may differ for various reasons.

We'd also like to bring a simple fact to your attention. You can indeed over-cool a motor and a motor that isn't running at the suggested operating temperature can not only lose power, but can also cause damage.

 Part 1 >> - Steps 1-5