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Moving radiator to rear of challenge truck with 300 tdi engine


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Hi, I'm moving radiator and expansion tank to rear of challenge truck, can I blank the bleed pipe from thermastat housing and just connect the small pipe from expansion tank direct to radiator and and larger pipe to bottom hose seeing the rad and header tank will now be higher than engine.

Alan w

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I would leave as many bleed points in the system as you can - you inevitably end up with air locks! Once you've run it for a bit, if you find you keep getting air in one bit of the system - run another bit of thin tube from there to the top of the rad so it can self-bleed.

Also, remember to use as big bore tube from the front to back as you can. Liquid flowing through a tube encounters a pressure drop inversely proportional to the bore. Your water pump runs at low pressure - and it's easy to end up with almost no flow through the rear rad! If you use bigger pipes than standard, the extra distance will make less difference to flow.

Si

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You'll need the thermostat bleed, or the slightest head gasket leak will really screw the engine up. But I get around it with 2 header tanks. The front one has a blanking cap, rear has the pressure cap. And a 1/2" bsp filler/bleed in the top hose at the engine end makes life a whole lot easier :)

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Thanks for all the replies, sounds like its best to keep the bleed from the thermastat housing, I think I'm going to mount radiator on top of trayback with the header tank slightly above top of rad, run large bore pipes under car, plumb largest pipe from header tank to lowest point of top hose like it would be normally, then run a smaller hose from thermastat housing to the rad and y it into header as normal. Think this should solve bleed problems. I was hoping I could get away with not running bleed hose to back of car but sounds like its best to.

Alan

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All I do is when I weld it up if there are any high points I weld a bit of plate ontop of the tube and drill and tap for a bolt, thread seal will seal it

If your truck is doing road speeds you are going to want to beef up the fans... at speed you get a vacuum behind the cab, this will steel the air from the fans, I either use either Audi A4 fans, these things are mean if you start them on the floor they will fly... unfortunatly they have a huge draw and we haven't figured out how to get the soft start to work best answer we have found is switch them on the negative with a 60amp relay

Another option is add another radiator done this on a mates lexus hilux daily, 2 side by side, T pipe in and same at the bottom and just a couple of cheap fans, this has worked really well... sits at 86C happily on the road

Have run setups with and without electric water pumps.... the only one we've used is the Craig Davies one with the controller, a very nice system, set and forget it monitors the temp and increases - decreases the flow from the pump to keep it to the ideal

These arn't necessary your water pump will flow enough so long as its good

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Roof scoops remove the need for extra fans, I've known two TDi's with rear rads (one Tomcat, one Dlander) and roof scoops, with no assistance from extra pumps or fans both worked fine. Also the two racers (one Isuzu, one LS1) had rear rads and roof scoops and they worked lovely too. The LS did make use of the fan a bit, but it can generate twice as much heat as the others!

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If we are pulling them for any reason, mainly due to overheating easy fix is to just cut the guts out.... removing the whole thing will create too much flow if the rad is close to the motor this can cause overheating as the coolant isn't in the radiator long enough to loose heat.... done it once on a rear mounted one and the temp never heated up that was on a 350 chev hilux

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As Nige and DR say, there's several reasons removing the stat can be bad. How it was explained to me is that without any restriction / back-pressure you can get steam pockets in the head. If the engine is running correctly it should work fine with a proper thermostat fitted.

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I agree with the above about removing the stat meaning cavitation, but when you rear mount a rad you are adding back pressure. You now have an extra 12ft of probably 38mm hose that is giving you back pressure.

I've run my 4.2 and now 4.6 without a stat for ages now, heater circuit is blocked as well. I have a bleed point on the engine, but no little hose returning from a high point. The top hose on a v8 is pretty much the highest point though. I've rolled it many times and never had any issues with air locks - touches wood.

G

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I agree with the above about removing the stat meaning cavitation, but when you rear mount a rad you are adding back pressure. You now have an extra 12ft of probably 38mm hose that is giving you back pressure.

I've run my 4.2 and now 4.6 without a stat for ages now, heater circuit is blocked as well. I have a bleed point on the engine, but no little hose returning from a high point. The top hose on a v8 is pretty much the highest point though. I've rolled it many times and never had any issues with air locks - touches wood.

G

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