I agree that we are talking about vastly different engines, my cars are street driven so they are not all out race cars, but obviously my 600+ HP engine is gonna create heat much quicker than a stock type motor. I've never had a bone stock motor in an old Mopar my whole life so I should have just avoided a thread like this as I usually do.
For the original poster, these guys are right, you should run a higher temp thermostat for your combo. My motor with a 160 will run 178 all day, and sitting in really bad traffic on a 90 degree day it will creep up to 190 or 195 which is fine, I'm sure my cooling system isn't perfect but it certainly does the job as the temp will come back down once I'm out of the traffic, maybe a 180 will make it more stable.
Sometimes our street/strip motors will only be at 140 degrees in the staging lanes and run the same 9 or 10 second ET's as they do when fully warmed. Stock motors are a different ball game, 3 tenths faster at 20 degrees warmer is a HUGE difference.
I'm gonna try a 180 after reading some of this info but I know when I did that years ago the temp seemed to climb over 200 while in traffic since the temp was already 180 or higher to begin with, but I doubt I had a great cooling system back then.
And I know for a fact my motor is not happy cruising around at 210 degrees.
As far as the name calling and stuff, that's pretty sad, we used to be able to debate or explain stuff here on this forum without that kind of behavior but I have thick skin, so no biggie.
I'll try to keep my knowledge and years of experience in the Race Section.
