Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

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?

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now


  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • Good morning all, Bit of a random question but figured I’d finally throw it out after wondering for a long while. Before I start, I'm hoping to do this purely out of personal preference. I think it would look better at night, and don't mind at all spending a few hours and dollars to get it done. I've copied this from a non-Skyline specific forum, so I apologize for the explanation of our headlight switch setup that we all know. Here we go: Zero lights (switch off) Parking lights (switch position 1) being a rectangular marker on the outside of the housing, my low beam being the projector in the centre (position 2), and a high beam triggered by my turn signal stalk. Most North American cars I’ve owned of this era have power to the amber corner (turning indicator) light as part of the first switch (parking lights). I’d love to have these amber corners receive power when the headlights and parking lights are on (headlight switch), yet still blink when using the turn signal which is of course a separate switch. Hopefully I’ve explained my question correctly. Is anyone aware of a way in which I might be able to achieve this? Thanks in advance
    • My heads are cathedral port! It's likely possible, but I don't want to add any extra moving parts (I know they don't move) between the heads, manifolds, etc. It will also affect how injectors/fuel rails etc sit and I don't really know if it would change how the FAST manifold goes/sits/fits. I have the LS6 steam pipes already as I have a very late LS1 block so it should be fine. I couldn't find anyone who had ever actually used one for this purpose, it seems 100% of people grind the water pump. The thermal spacers are 12mm and are half way to the cost of the newer water pump anyhow... so if it comes to that I suppose I'd rather buy a new pump. The bearing in the pump I do have is a little.. clunky, but it hasn't done that much time and I never noticed it when the car was together in the past few years, so..
    • The bushing has failed, not all that uncommon for a car of this age.  Any mechanic should be able to push in a new bushing for you, or you can probably buy the entire lower control arm, complete with bushes.
    • Could you not use "thermal" spacers to give the clearance, like the ones I used between the blower and head? That raised the manifold height by around 10-15mm Albeit the ones I used were for cathedral ports, but I assume they have similar for rectangular ports????
    • Thanks Paul I reached out to Autotainment but they no longer work on JDM cars as the guy who used to do the work moved on and is no longer doing that kind of work. I am talking with Level Up Audio though.
×
×
  • Create New...