The Franken Scout!

[Korllach]

Well, I got the top off meatwad the frankenscout and have been driving it the past couple of days.

If you will recall this is the '73 I bought from one of the rather questionable folks that work at goshen auto salvage (we wont get into the life lessons learned with this Scout)


anyway, it is running a sbc 350, 1406 edelbrock carb (it has been rebuilt within the last year). Radiator is a GM radiator but I am not sure out of what, or how many cores it has. Wether it is single or multiple.

Issue I am having is it runs about 190* when cruising down the highway. Will run 190* all day as long as I am moving. If I get into stop and go traffic, that temp gauge shoots up to 230-240 in a hurry. If I am lucky I can get out of the bumper to bumper get down the road again and and the engine will cool off.


My question is 2 fold.

1. Should adding a fan shroud be sufficient enough to keep her cool? I remember reading scout2 fan shrouds are a bit of a rarity. Since I am running a GM engine with GM radiator, is there something I can transplant onto it to help force that airflow over the radiator?

2. If the shroud isnt enough, what would your suggestions be to help keep her cool?

Carb mixture is running great, the guy that fixed my frankenscout suspension tuned up the rebuilt carb.

It doesnt sound like the timing is too far advanced or retarded which I know can really increase heat.

I drained all of the old fluid out when I switched over from analog gauges to electric gaugues so it has new green 50/50 fluid in the gut.

Here is a poser shot of meatwad the franken Scout with the top off.

 

[Michael Mayben]

Any radiator system needs a fan shroud. Along with a fan that is properly positioned within the shroud to avoid airflow stagnation.

Your basic description describes a normal cooling system operation in that with increased engine load, heat increases also that must be "moved" through the radiator system (heat exchanger). When ya slow down, load is reduced, but air flow across the radiator is also decreased significantly due to lack of "ram air", therefor engine temp reduction lags way behind decreased system load. The shroud creates a much greater volume of air pulled across the heat exchanger (think of it as air magnification!), instead of the air spilling around the cores at slow road speed or idle or even worse, stagnation/reversion.

The distance of the fan-to-radiator is also part of this equation. If you simply look at a stock Scout II and try and emulate that on this swaperoo rig, ya can't go wrong!

However, most of the GM shit from the 60's>late 70's placed the engine far to the rear in the chassis as compared to IH. That in turn necessitated the use of a long, deep shroud since the radiator set way out front in the hood line as a "styling" thing. Consequently the fan is way too far away from the core! But they compensated by increasing the overall size of the heat exchanger package. You see the same thing on the Jeep units with the super-deep shroud, that is not good design practice.

The engine-driven cooling fan system and the radiator/shroud package must be designed as a system for best performance with no unusual "spikes" in engine temp under certain load conditions. The IH stuff was very nicely done design-wise...not so much of the GM shit which was always driven by the multiple vendors involved with the components and the desire for least production cost.

Why not try and find a matching boneyard shroud for the radiator you are running? Some radiator pros can simply look at a radiator and tell ya exactly what vehicle it was designed for. And somewhere on the radiator will be some identification numbers that can be used for investigation also.

New Scout II fan shrouds are readily available and have been in production from light line for quite a few years now. Pickall shrouds are coming on line from light line this summer, both versions.

 

[Korllach]

Thanks again for the education!

I will grab some pics of the radiator and engine mounting position. Now that you mention the deep fan shroud I remember my 72 elcamino ss had a super deep fan shroud as compared to other rigs.

The worst part about finding parts for this thing is not having any idea what the donor vehicles this stuff came out of.

I will be sure to put the frankenscout up on the readers rides soon.