350 Running warm

[Terry Wilkerson]

Let's talk about freeze protection of 50/50. Anyone know how low the temp it protects your vehicle?

 

[79dentside]

I wasn’t stating that those guages are 100% accurate. You will also note that both engines were fairly cold, I was just showing how one was a range type guage, the other was numerical. The level on the temp guage has no relation to anything other than that is how warm the engine was when I took the pic.

It takes about an hour for the suburban to reach 210-215. It likes to stick around 195 or 200 ish until its fully warm.

I bought a new thermostat, I’ll install it and see if flushing it helps.

 

[75gmck25]

I run a 195 degree thermostat and my aftermarket mechanical temp gauge shows that it settles in at about 190-195 almost all the time.

Editorial comment (it can be ignored) - In my opinion, switching to a 180 thermostat to fix overheating in the 210+ range is like your spouse setting the house temp at 80 to try to get the house warmed up faster. Using high flow or other improvement is better than using a lower temp thermostat.

I had issues with the engine running a little hot, and started out with a 195 degree high flow thermostat, high flow water pump, and severe duty fan clutch with the stock metal fan. That helped a lot, and it kept it from ever overheating. However, the final fix was switching to a Champion aluminum radiator after I accidently put a hole in the old radiator.

The only time I see it spike up to about 210 is if I’ve been running at highway speed and then slow down and stop at a light for a while. Even then it only takes a couple minutes for the fan clutch to reengage fully and it comes back to 195.