Big block E-body std. cooling

[hebeegbz]

i have a shaker six pac 4.10 with a 550 .320 cam .runs 12.0s .with a 22 in rad come stock with my car .i have run a 26 inch radiator with only one mod and that was 2 qtr inch holes on one side two 1 1/2 inch bolts and a pair of one inch aluminum spacers . my car ran in 95 to 105 summer heat for the last 20 years with this radiator and a stant 20 lb race cap . when i found a perfect nos 22 inch radiator i installed it last year and still no temp change ,my car has always run around 200 degs but im ok with 210 . also most problems are in the engine not the cooling system . i use a infra red heat gun and shoot at  each head and the top and bottom of the radiator ,and with headers i check each cylinder for heat range changes ,this will also tell me about timing advance such as retard leads to 10 degrees of extra heat or more . several people will say replace the pump radiator &cap hoses pullys and ad electric fans and some times this helps mask a poor running engine ,but almost never fixes the problem . the car in question might not even have an issue but my first question would be does the heat build more at idle or moving this alone will narrow down the area to look at .

[mrob]

hebeegbz:
The problem is at idle. When the car is moving, the temp stabilizes at around 190, but when I get stuck in some traffic and the car has to idle for too long, I see the temp creeping up to 210. That's when I pray that the traffic starts moving again. So far I've been lucky, but I wouldn't want to get stuck in any hour-long traffic jams.
I'm definitely thinking about getting a good IR heat gun. Just out of curiousity, how much of a temp. difference do you see between the top and bottom tanks? I've heard that the difference typically is around 15 deg.

Moparal:
Glad to hear that your motor doesn't run too hot with the 22in. rad. When I rebuilt my 383 seven years ago, I had the block and heads hot tanked and I flushed them with water again during the final cleaning before assembly. They looked clean and I didn't see any rusted crud anywhere.
Your suggestion about the timing and jetting has me thinking. I'm running a Pro-Form distributor with 24 deg. of mech. advance (all in at 3000 rpm). My initial is set at 12 deg. BTDC, so the total is 34 deg. My vac. advance is connected to ported vacuum and starts at around 14 in. Hg. Don't know exactly how much extra advance the canister adds, but I'd guess around 16-18 deg. max.
The carb is a Holley 3310-11 with #70 primary jets and knowing Holley, the carb is probably somewhat rich - so that's something that I'll keep in mind.

[quapman]

Hot-tanking is outdated these days and can still leave crud in the water passages. Super-hot Baking is the current technology and pretty much vaporizes anything in there, leaving just a pile of dust, kind of like creamation.

I've read that Ford and GM used to acid fush their blocks to get all the sand out, but lazy old Chrysler did not. This is why so many Mopes used to get plugged up rads back in the day.

What kind of head gaskets did you use? Sometimes the little slots for the water holes get plugged with accumulated crud. Some guys open them up all the way for maximum flow.

[hebeegbz]

mrob ,i see a top to bottom difference ranging from 30 to 50 degs .but if you see only a few degrees change the radiator isnt displacing energy or the fluids are moving to fast to cool .a simple check would be to see if the engine responds to raising rpm when in traffic conditions ,if your system drops a degree or two with a few 100 rpm then you could look at a radiator .most new tech rads are large tube cross flows instead of many small ones . dont change thermostats thats very seldom helpfull after the engine gets to temp.also al has good points as i also touched upon about the engine itself causing the problems timing and fuel .the exhaust temp will tell all .if you look at what we do with pro level racing you will see when a car hits the pits a crew member will have a gun on the exhaust side looking for engine failure or tune issues we never leave home with out a heat gun .

[mrob]

quapman: I used the MP steel shim gaskets. The cooling passages in the deck were all clean when I assembled the motor 7 years ago. Since then some crud may have built up, but I remember the passages as being pretty large.

hebeegbz: wow, you see 30 to 50 dge. difference between the top and bottom tanks. I need a good haet gun to see if your idea about raising the rpm helps. I do know that my rad would probably be considered "old school" technology, since it has 4 rows of 1/2" tubes on 3/8" centers. I know that the newer aluminum radiators have a smaller number of tubes but with larger cross sections which allows the coolant to flow faster in the tubes.

Update - I spoke to a reputable radiator shop yesterday and the tech seems to think that my rad. should have a baffle in it to distribute the flow more evenly across the core. He claims that by having the inlet and outlet on the same side of the radiator, some of the flow "short circuits" and flows directly from the inlet to the outlet (sort of makes sense). I'm going to bring him the rad. and let him flow test it and install a baffle in the top tank. Stay tuned and I'll share the results with everyone.
Thanks for all of the replies!