Hi, just been reading the thread about monitoring engine through dials. I intend to fit some of these sometime in the future but have other priorities at the moment. I’ve a pretty decent engine (2 litre type 4)at the moment, until I get round to fitting the afore mentioned, any of you with monitoring dials spotted driving situations that put the engines in the danger zone. Plus any driving situations that you could avert to quickly to let’s say cool things down. It may be obvious - long steep hills etc, revving too hard etc ? But does 30mph around town cool things down, or is 50mph on A road better? Making sure warm up before, driving harder. Letting idle to cool after long journey before turning off engine? Driving a limited time or distance without a cooling stop? Don’t know if these are vaild, myths etc Any learnings from your dials?
Don’t stop at the top of a hill and turn the engine off to let it cool. Don’t labour the engine in a high gear it’s better to drop down and increase the revs The faster the engine is spinning the faster the fan is spinning
Thanks, makes sense. Never like being stuck in a traffic jam, but I suppose the fan is spinning and the engine is not working hard. Maybe oil temp doesn’t rise in traffic jam?
I have sat for over 1/2 hour queuing to get into a show with no problem - 30 mph around town I stay in 3rd- only go into 4th when I go over 40
IMO a decent temp gauge is a good indicator of trouble , it’s why they are fitted to most vehicles . People call them worry gauges but IMO it stops you worrying and you can’t always get out of the bus and go round the back to check the dipstick when doing 90 or a 100 on the motorway which is incidentally about the temp that is a ok easy to fit too .
I too have the same engine etc with Fi and have had the same worries, but not any more!. I once spent 2 hours trying to get off Latitude festival just start stopping and then another two hours bumper to bumper on the A12 trying to get home and in 30c! Even when I stopped to fill up with jungle juice she started first turn. When I did finally get home I did touch the engine in the engine bay and was ok, also removed the dip stick and touched the bottom of it and was not scalding hot. I fit in the summer a pair of plastic 'EARZ' (sprayed pastel white) to the air intakes, don't know for sure if it helps air intake but hope it does (NB no one has ever asked me what they are so perhaps not noticed them as they are matching pastel white). Have wondered if the 'snail fan' was switched on when in traffic if it would help cooling, (a old dodge from my towing days was to switch the heater and blower fan on to cool down a over heating car!) So now I don't worry so much and infact thousands of our busses live in hot countries. If I think the engine could be overheating in a jam I just increase the revs a bit to cool and let idle to cool before switching off after a long run.
Best care for your engine is changing the oil frequently, and filter if you have one, and always keeping the oil level at maximum. Oil is cheap, change it often.
Great, more evidence to suggest traffic jams are nothing to stress about. Just had a look at those ‘EARZ’. So air scoops for the intakes. Interesting.
Lots of stuff on the forum about keeping your engine cool. I learned the importance of keeping heat from the exhaust out of the engine bay, attending to any holes in the tin, renewing the foam surround, insulating the underside of the rear tin to reflect exhaust heat away. Made a big difference to my engine cooling. Prevention is better and cheaper than fitting a temperature gauge. I wouldn't bother fitting air scoop ears.
On mine it does and the pressure drops, but it's not been critical and I've been in some pretty extreme temperatures in Europe. It's most noticeable when coming off the motorway so you have an engine that's been working hard but the cooling fan is no longer doing so.
Most of the time now they're "idiot guages", though, and don't fluctuate during normal use but only swing to red if the engine goes out of certain parameters- to stop people worrying. I used to run a temp gauge in the beetle, but as predicted I just worried about it the whole time! If your engine's serviced properly (not tuned by ear, millionth time I've said that!) and not missing tin, etc., temp isn't an issue. My VWs have broken down so many times I can't remember them all, but none were temperature related after I stopped tuning by ear and used a CO meter, dwell guage & timing light like a proper mechanic. Unless you count fire as being a temperature issue!
Thanks, tin is in good condition recently sorted, foam is nice and plump and timed with a strobe so hopefully should be fine. Yeh, modern gauges - BMW hasn’t even got a temperature gauge and Audi has the idiot one that stays absolutely vertical all the time, until the fan died, the head warped, 2 minutes after that it told me told it was very hot! Helpful
The snail fan simply blows air through the heat exchangers, it doesn’t take heat away from the engine. No EARZ on my 2.3l, it doesn’t overheat and I live where it’s a bit hotter than the UK.
