225 Dauntless V6 Cooling Problems

I would be adding some stainless welded wire hardware "cloth" or something similar over that for a little protection from flipped up debris. Is the fan mounting on the under side? That may help.

I second Donny's above comment. A half inch seems about perfect for fan/shroud clearance, at least if flex in the radiator/frame/engine mounts is minimal.

 

I didn't either until I read a few old postings on here. I basically gave up on it and the jeep sat for most of the year because I was so frustrated. This was one of those fixes I like to refer to as a "magic fix". BTW, another magic fix is replacing the mid body gaskets on a Flat CR carb on the dirt bikes.

 

Agree. Going to optimize now that I know what the root problem was. I'm just happy I can actually use the jeep in the warmer season now. This problem had me so frustrated for so long. I actually took the jeep out a week earlier and it quickly went to 200 when I got to crawling so I jumped back on the highway and headed back home so pissed so I jumped on here and started reading again. Thanks everyone!!!!!

 

For anyone else dealing with this, drop your coolant level down to about level with the radiator hose. Plenty of flow observed when I did this. Obviously this is just for testing. Fill it back up when done.

 

I can relate to your frustration. Hard to get motivated on something without a plan forward. Park it and go ride.

 

Exactly.

 

I suggest adding a trans temp gauge. Wouldn't be nice to fix the engine overheating just to have the transmission oil overheat and turn the color of coke.

 

BTW, I see that nasty 2 stroke............................
Can you still ride that in CA?

 

Sacramento:

As of '22 no two strokes (and all other red sticker bikes) produced after '22 will be allowed on public lands. All 2-strokes (red sticker bike) bikes built prior to '22 are grandfathered in and now get a green sticker. They are doing away with the red/green sticker seasonal nonsense and just banning "polluters" all together. It's all a joke to me.

 

As a former Kern County resident myself, I can relate to a number of your posts. And yes, as a guy WHO RACED MOTORCYCLES in KC, I can relate to the 2-stroke BS as well. Motocross. Sprockets Park, White Wolf Raceway, and lots of time out in the desert near Red Rock, which is now an ORV area, I believe.

Glad to see you got her figured out. That trans cooler in the way was my first thought as well. My winch and power steering cooler both block my airflow to a point.

Happy wheeling! We sure had some fun with our 4x4's when we were living down there.

 

For all of you mad-scientist-types who are innovative and free-thinking, let me run this by you, and this came to me as a result of my own cooling concerns with my CJ.

Mine came to me with two electric fans, one front, one rear. The rear fan had a tight shroud that pulled air into about a 10" space and that blew almost directly onto my HEI distributor. I surely don't need any excess heat blown onto my ignition module. They don't like heat, and they live on the bottom of the inside of the HEI dizzy.

I was talking to a tech about my cooling concerns, and mentioned the dual fans. He said that was a problem, and then mentioned some term that I don't recall, but it had to do with dead air space between the fans, they counteracting one another in some way. I was convinced, so yesterday I pulled the smaller rear fan out. The shroud itself seemed to be blocking air flow, too flat against the surface, so I wasn't sold on that either. I have a larger push fan up front only.

The other thing I had issue with was that the fans were essentially blowing HOT air directly against my engine block. With the rear fan removed I can now see that the air will flow much more freely and not be focusing on the engine block and components.

I suppose one could argue that 200* air blowing against a hot block is better than nothing at all, but why settle for that? The purpose of the radiator is to cool the fluid in the motor and then circulate that back through the motor to keep temps in check. Everyone agrees. The purpose of the fan is to help suck the air through the radiator when temps get too heated. Some folks in certain rigs, racing and otherwise, use remote radiators/fans altogether, normally mounted out back somewhere.

We're working with old engineering theory. Back in the day, electric fans weren't a thing. The only practical place to put a fan was on the front of the motor, driven by the crank. Shrouds were then added, etc, adding to the efficiency. But that super-heated air was still blowing directly onto the engine. Always has.

My CJ came to me with mechanically-switched fan(s) only. That means that I have to REMEMBER to turn the fan on. Not easy to get used to.

Radiators are designed to use moving air to do their cooling, primarily when driving down the road. Cool air forces it's way through the radiator at speed, and that is supplemented by fans. Not a lot of air blowing when you're out wheeling (crawling) through the wilderness.

So when I forget to turn on my fan(s), especially when testing at idle in the shop, things heat up in a hurry. I've seen 240+*. Yes, I've looked into supplemental temp triggers, but I'm probably going to upgrade my radiator soon, and that'll solve it.

Is there some reason we actually WANT hot air blowing against our motors, other than in winter cold, that makes any sense? The key is airflow, but NOT against your motor, HEI ignition, carb, or much of anything else. But we do want to strip heat away from those components with a cool air flow.

At minimum this should scurry-on an immediate way to shroud and vent that hot air away from the motor, likely downward or off to the sides like open exhausts. What that should be combined with would be COOL air being blown up against the motor, from a non-heated source, similar to brake vents for race cars. That could be pulled from most anywhere.

So, shroud from the radiator down or side, fresh cooling air directly to the motor.

I think you're tracking with me.

So now I ask, are we blowing the radiator air the wrong way altogether? With modern fans, should we instead be sucking air from the back of the radiator out toward the front? Maybe from a shroud that drew air from the front, sides, or below, in reverse of what I'd suggested above? We've sure got the fans to do it. And if from the bottom, perhaps a scooped-build that caught highway air that the shroud would force upward, toward the radiator while assisting the fan? In that case we'd want the radiator protected from direct wind, and vent the hot air out to the sides, away from the engine.

The radiator's only purpose is to cool the fluids in the engine. It could even be split in half and separated in the middle, connected top and bottom by hoses, allowing highway air to blow between them and directly onto the motor. Makes a lot more sense to me.

Since I only use electric fans, why not tweak this a bit to better help the motor, particularly when out crawling around? And yes, venting the engine compartment in some way makes a lot of sense as well. I'm going to give this some thought.

There's got to be a way to build a better mouse trap here. I'm wondering what wheeling in the summer heat will do as well. Ready to pickup a 4-row radiator myself.

Please submit your suggested theories and brain-spikes for .25 cents each. I accept PayPal (not).

 

I had a look and damned-near put it right into my cart to order one up. But having been a long-term online seller myself, I opted to look further, because I wanted to know where it was made. I've had some major problems with stuff I've bought off of Amazon.

Made in China. I've had such piss-poor luck with Amazon Chinese-made products, I have concerns. The quality looks great in the pics, however.

Then I began reading the feedback ratings. Buyer-after-buyer complained about getting damaged goods, clearly from shipping. This tells me that the packaging sucks, this coming from a guy who's shipped many thousands of packages myself. Not a good sign. Dents, leaking, etc. Read for yourself.

Then I looked at the overall seller rating. This guy sells these radiators under two different accounts, with different account names but the exact-same everything else. Lots of sellers do this so they can trash one account when feedback gets too bad, and also to make it look like they have competition.

His rating? 83% positive on one account, 84% on the other. He'd be kicked off of eBay with ratings like that. On eBay, anyone below 97% positive would be someone you'd want to avoid. My eBay rating was 100% for decades.

My feeling is that the fan would fail, the radiator would leak over time, and we'd be looking for another, sooner rather than later. Do I feel lucky? We'll see.

Your mileage may vary.

 

Can relate

 

Update. Several hours of desert this weekend. Engine temp is great. I think it was upper 80s yesterday so not crazy hot but definite improvement. I added a fan to trans cooler.

Ordered fan on sale from American Air. $29 on sale, free shipping. Smoking deal. No issues after several hours of use.

 

Nope but I'm lazy and just want to play so I'll probably NEVER get around to implementing the perfect solution on any of my rides. That being said, I strive for a degree of quality that minimizes my desert walks and laying under the Jeep in the middle of nowhere.

 

My 2 cents. The thermal conductance of cast iron pretty much sucks and I don't think you will derive any measurable cooling by re-routing the radiator outflow to avoid the engine. If your heads/block are aluminum, you may see a slight benefit but if the re-routing in any way hinders the air flow though the radiator that will easily be lost. In short, a lot of work (and potentially money) for very questionable results, unless maybe one has a block cast with cooling fins----

 

Good input. This mod will be a ways off, in all likelihood, too many things ahead of it, but as a caveat let me add something.

I pulled that smaller 'suction fan' from the rear of the radiator. I had IMMEDIATE positive results once I got it back out on the road. The CJ was immediately running cooler. That part of it, at least, had measurable results.

I agree that the motor itself adds a lot of heat. But adding MORE heat? That can never be good. I'm even thinking about mounting a fan directly to the top of the hood, sucking hot air up and out.

I took a quick look around the radiator area, looking for places to draw and funnel air, and will have another look soon. First I'm going to try reversing the polarity of my e-fan, to see if it'll reverse direction. I think at lower speeds that would have to be a benefit. My fan is switched manually, so at highway speeds it doesn't need to be running. Even with a simple solution, buying a high-CFM fan to replace my current one, on the front of the radiator, sucking, might work better. Only question would be whether it would be sucking hot engine heat rather than ducted cooler air from another source. It would be easy to shroud that backside off and pull cool air from another source.

I'll keep looking around.

 

Why not start by removing the hood.

Without serious unnecessary ducting(which increases static pressure)there’s little chance a reverse fan would be a benefit. Even a thistle guard screen can compromise otherwise working cooling systems on things like tractors.

Without the ducting, there would be a speed range below highway speed that the system likely would “stall”

Why not do some Red Green testing and remote the radiator? Slap a mech fan on the water pulley and you have proof of concept. As stated, the block likely has questionable btu loss without factoring for the cooling system. Also, I’ve never measured it but am fairly confident it’s not 200f air coming out.

I feel like the juice would not be worth the squeeze.

 

Also, reversing polarity of your fan will reverse it, but the blades are designed to only go one direction, at least any one I’ve seen.