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as the title suggests im just wondering what your average operating temp (water temp) would be on city driving and just driving in general please.....

mine is about 76 deg on cruise at 100 and about 86-90 traffic...

at what stage should i start to worry about water temperature the guage is still halfway i was not gonna worry till the gusge started to get up a bit... the temp readings i have are from my microtech...

ALSO what pressure radiator caps do the gtst have std or what pressure are u using???mine is a 90 kpa cap.... thanks guys :)

Hey, I also don't have aftermarket temp gauge, but the stock one on my R32 sits dead on half once warmed up regardless of the ambient temperature, and the car still has the bonnet heatshield. It doesn't have the radiator fan shroud though as I have a single electric thermo fan setup as opposed to the standard clutch driven thing.

  • 1 month later...

I origionally had the clutch fan & shroud setup which worked fine with no overheating. The temp guage would sit on what looks like a nudge under half, in heavy traffic on a 30degree+ day the temp guage would nudge up only 1/2 a needle width (Not noticible aunless you stick your nose against the plastic & squint your eyes)

THEN, I decided to fit a FMIC.

To help improve cooling I slapped on 2 x 12" Davis thermo fans (more cfm's than 1 16") & I had the radiator cleaned & pressure tested.

This is the strange thing. On a 33+degree day I could drive around without the A/C off & the temp guage wouldn't budge, even in traffic. A/C on & it would slowly start creeping towards the H, as it got roughly to the line under the H water would start to bubble out of the overflow. (Found this out accidently)

As water was replaced with air (overflow emptied) it would cause the car to overheat even in cooler weather with the A/C off. This threw me off track as to what the problem was.

During the second summer of this happening I decided to return it to stock as I had eliminated all of the problems (hence Chemi-weld did shit, block flushed & radiator had been double checked)

Fitted the fan and shroud. Unbelievable. No more overheating, no more loss of coolant. :(

I had wasted so much money trying all of the other options first. Oh well at least I know it is in good nick. :/

Apparently the fact of not using a shroud with the 2x thermo's is what didn't help matters. Sure the 2 x 12" thermo's may push/pull more air than 1 big 16" but the 16" covers more surface area which is what is important.

So to cut a long story short.. Mine sits smack on half. Might budge 1/2 a needle width in hot weather but never any more. :(

Remember though, water temp means shit, you could have your car running within normal operating temp when the oil is cooking.

Running off a oil temp guage is safer & more accurate. Not so much for the street, track is where it is a must.

i had a single thermo setup on my rb20det in my s13, occasionally it would boil and the overflow would spit back out. I've now thrown a 12" on there as well and it seems to be happy with that but i don't like my chances when i get around to putting the fmic on.

When you turn the car off can you hear bubbling near the firewall?

If so then air is caught in the heater hoses & should be removed by the bleeder near the firewall that is t pieced from one of the heater hoses. Well On the R32's anyhow.

thanks for that.. ill check it out now. seems to be a fair mount of ppl with rb20s in here.. so ill ask here instead of starting another thread, on the idle control thing at the back of the plenum, you adjust it by turning a screw right? which one exactly is it.. is it the flat blade one - the head of the screw is towards the drivers side? or is another one?

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