v8bug

I have my 5.3 swapped in my 71 vw bug and everything is working pretty well. I am still tuning the megasquirt, but it runs good. Due to the truck water pump and the lower mounting radiator the highest point of my cooling system is the outlet to the top of the radiator. At this high point I made a small pipe with a 1/2" fitting in the side so I could top off the cooling system.

So, I run the car and everything seems fine. The mechanical gauge I have stays right at 190 (gauge is mounted in a small box that is a bypass for the heater core hoses) and the megasquirt reads 190 also(read from the temp sensor in the head). Now after I drive it and let it cool down I check the level at the highest point and its low, which is expected since the extra hot fluid bleed into the catch can from the radiator cap.

Is this setup all right? How will the cooling system get more fluid if it is low when the catch can is lower than the highest point? Should I put a inline radiator cap with outlet where I have my home-made fill fitting?

Another quick question: I have the ls1 style coolent rails(small little tubes that connect both heads front and back together) there is one outlet pointing towards the front driver side that I have blocked off, should this actually be going somewhere? I saw somewhere they fed this back to the water pump?

any help/suggestions would be great!!!

thanks,

Matt

s10-den

that little tube sounds like the steam line,that has to be hooked up...you talking about the line in the 3rd pic in the middle under the TB?

v8bug

yup, connects both heads in the front and rear together. The original 5.3 and the rear two holes blocked off, and just connected the front two together, it had no output line. So where should this output go?