SR running a bit hot, any advice
 

so recently got my car up and running, bled the coolant and everything and sitting in the car at idle it will hang around 180-185F. I have an aftermarket water temp sensor in the upper radiator hose. Finally decided to drive it home from my buddys shop and about halfway home (from the shop home about 20-25mins). I kept my eye on the temp gauge and it would slowly creep up to 190F then slowly to 200F. It was also around rush hour time so there was a bit of traffic. Eventually it started to hit 210-215F so I pulled into a parking lot and let the car sit for about 20mins or so with the E fan on to cool it down. Once it got around 170F I got back on the road and right before i got home it was close to 215-217F and as soon as i got home i turned it off and let the fan run again for a good while to cool it down. I am in TX and it does get real hot here but im debating on either upgrading my E fan to something real high CFM, also might consider running water wetter and distilled water to help with the temps. Anyone know how hot is too hot? I definitely don't want to do any damage to the engine, it does have a metal HG but im not trying to run it higher than 190F. I did check the oil and coolant and didn't see anything to worry about.

Have you changed your thermostat? Could be blocked.


Also have you thought about upgrading to a thicker radiator like a Koyorad

to be honest for the time being i removed the thermostat, i had put 2 new ones in there, tested them in a pot before to make sure they were working but the thermostats literally would not open up in the car causing it to heat up at idle so after i pulled them out it hung around 180-185F at idle once it warmed up. I don't have heater or a/c so it won't hurt to run without one. and i don't have a koyorad but might consider upgrading that or possibly upgrading the fans as well to a higher CFM

get better radiator and Altima fans or comparible...I used good thermostatic fan switch with it

your fans are blowing towards the engine, right?

that is correct yes

i was hearing something about the altima fans, any particular year ?

also the temps that i was getting at, is that something to worry about or am i overthinking it? either way i don't want to be around 210 just cruising after a little while

i don't think it matters..i grabbed 94 off amazon...and name of my controller is DCC...just plug and play! dccontrol.com

gotcha well i ended up ordering something off of summit actually should be here in a few days, also the temps i was getting at, is that something to worry about or is it not that bad?

CLutch Fan for the WIn

Those temperatures are fine. The factory fan relay is set to come on low at 203 and high at 212. So creeping up to 215 in stop and go traffic is kinda normal. The thermostat opens around 170, but doesn't fully open until around 194. These temps are from the FSM, and I've noticed the same behavior in my G35 as well in regards to fan HI/LOW temps. Pretty sure you're over thinking the specific temps.

Where is the cluster gauge during this? I know it doesn't tell you specific temp, but it WILL move up the the H if you're actually overheating.

got it, well that does give me peace of mind. I have a buddy who was saying that was way too hot and it had me overthinking on it a bit. My gauge cluster doesn't work so I just run all aftermarket gauges, the coolant temp gauge was reading those numbers at the time. I ordered a permacool fan with a higher cfm than the fan I had before so I'm going to test drive it probably sometime tomorrow and see if the temps stay in check.

Anything under 215 is okay. if youre running a stock radiator upgrading might help. a bigger fan wont help if your overheating while driving (that's not what its for)

how clean is your coolant? you could try pulling the radiator and flushing it backwards and forwards with water to clean it out. (should be able to do this with the block as well just not as thoroughly) I know my stock KA rad had tons of nasty shit in it
your water pump might be going as well

my SR ran at a consistent 160 with an aluminum rad and no thermostat. it would creep up only when stopped and would cool back down while driving

what your saying makes me think a coolant passage is blocked, water pump is failing or your headgasket is leaking but you should be seeing odd coolant issues if the HG was bad

We can't stress enough how well this combo works/fixes overheating issues and keep your temps low..

Koyo dual pass N-FLO radiator + OEM Clutch fan and shroud and if you want to go a little over board run Motul (MOCOOL RADIATOR ADDITIVE and DISTILLED WATER).

Every car that passes through our shop with over heating issues and higher temps, we do this set up and it works wonders..

Also, might be one of the easier steps, but tend to be overlooked is bleeding the system properly.. Letting gravity help you is the best method thus far for us. Jack up front end as high possible, hook up the no-spill funnel (fill it up, keep it filled), turn on the car and just let it run for at least 20-30min.

If you need any help or questions on parts shoot me a message! I'll be glad to assist you.

TF-WORKS
Kevin

What Kevin said above. Throw away the e-fans. New oem fan clutch, oem shroud, gktech fan, nismo thermostat, distilled water and water wetter.

I played the e-fans game, as well as many of other drivers I know personally. We all now run the setup I listed or similar. All cars run much cooler, and stay cool for longer on the track.

All of this only helps with a bled system. Get a coolant bleeder bucket that attaches to the top of the radiator. Lisle makes a great one.

+1 for GKTECH Fan and Nismo thermostat!

the coolant was fairly clean, didn't notice any oil in the coolant and i checked the dipstick super clean oil so HG isn't what i suspect although when i was bleeding the coolant after putting a new thermostat in it did get real hot once and i shut it off immediately. I flushed out the coolant last night and put all distilled water with a bottle of water wetter and that seemed to help a lot. I let the car warm up last night, and the temp gauge hung around 180F forever which is a good thing. Also I didn't turn the fan on at all so the water wetter had to have made a big difference.

Roger that, i haven't heard of the MOCOOL but i ran water wetter with distilled water, took majority of the coolant i had out and flushed it last night. Hasn't gotten hot again yet. Im going to warm the car up again in a few and drive it around to make sure temps don't creep up again but it seems to be good now. Much appreciate the replies and help!

I did fear it was a HG issue considering it got to 240F one time when the new thermostat i had would not open up, had someone watching the gauge while i was under the hood bleeding the coolant and they didn't pay attention sadly. I did check the oil and coolant after and both were still clean, also it was shut off immediately after I realized the Tstat wasn't opening. I hope that didn't do any damage, also the HG is a metal one which should help but it hasn't gotten that hot again since.

You need a thermostat to allow the coolant in the radiator time to actually cool down.

I do not believe the SR and KA mix oil and coolant when the HG fails
also +1 on the coolant burping i forgot about that

Are you still running cool at 180 consistently now that youre running distilled and water wetter? I cant imagine those 2 things could account for a 30-40 degree drop.

well basic mechanics it's not like that can't happen i don't see why the SR or KA would be excluded from those signs BUT yea it's been around there for the most part hasn't seen 200F yet. I test drove it again last night and the hose clamp on the lower radiator hose broke so i replaced it last night when i got back home, it was still on but was slightly leaking cause it wasn't tight enough. I topped it off this morning going to cruise it around today to make sure but last night it hung a hair over the 180F mark and didn't keep creeping up

I see what you mean, i guess without it once it reaches op. temp. it will gradually keep going up

It's actually opposite. By not running a thermostat, there's nothing to keep the engine running at optimum temp. This would be really noticeable on cold days when the coolant is flowing through the radiator unrestricted, the engine may actually never reach op temp. Basically the thermostat keeps the engine running at op temp, opening as needed.

The oil galleys were really far away from the cooling jackets iirc.

no. without a thermostat your engines temprature will be controlled by the ambient temprature and may never reach operating temprature on the streets. and on really cold days would be stupid low temps

I see well i finally took it on the highway for the first time yesturday it eventually hits 180F but gradually creeps up to 200 then slowly climbs.

Just tossing this out there because my buddy had this issue one time and after a few hours of checking basically what everyone has said already I was checking all the hoses and one of the hoses that he had used to bypass his heater core had a small kink in it restricting flow, it was very hard to see but once I changed the hose with one that fit better the temps were a-lot better after that.

damn didnt think about that at all, definitely worth checking i will do just that and see, makes sense though if that was kinked it won't get proper flow etc

the heater bypass hose that bypasses the thermostat willc ause you to overheat if its kinked but it will stop overheating when you pull the thermostat

I see yea i don't have any kinked hoses, im starting to suspect the worse HG issue, going to try to do a leakdown test as soon as i can cause that's really the last thing i expect it to be at this point unfortunately

What? When a headgasket fails, catastrophic failure, oil and water will mix. If you have a small fissure, you can leak compression into coolant without mixing. Most of the time a head gasket fails, it's always a milk shake.