Friend has a 454ci in his 69 camaro with Edelbrock fuel injection and is seeing coolant temps 210-220 in 65° weather. It also seems he needs to top off the coolant, but no signs of leaks or puddles under the car. Rad is aluminum and electric fans are working fine. Any suggestions as to what he should check?
If a head gasket has failed would he not see smoke out the tail pipe?
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

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If it has enough water volume and flow, and it's getting enough air,
it has to be getting excess heat from somewhere.
If it's using water, it could still be a small enough leak that it's not blowing yet.


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BBC cooling problems on street cars can be very frustrating, but not impossible to overcome.

1. Do you have a infra red heat gun? If so, take the car for a drive, get it to show 220 on the gauge, then check the tank temp going into the radiator, and coming back out to the water pump. If the temp drop is really big, like 215 going into the radiator and 160 coming back to the water pump, that is actually bad, and indicates you don't have enough coolant flow.

2. lack of ignition timing at idle, too lean A/F ratio at idle, radiator too thick, fans recirculating.

3. Drilling a 1/8" hole in the thermostat has helped on my last 3 bbc street cars, but I have the bypass plugged.

4. I don't have much good to say about electric fans, and when you have a thick radiator core it just gets worse, but lots of LS cars have 400+ cid & 1000 hp with a fairly small radiator and electric fans, so it is possible to make them work.

just my opinions...