Engine Cooling with Methanol.

What are you guys using? Radiator?

How is a Engine thats filled and hot blocked work? Run hot? Able to hot lap it?

A friend of mine ran a chebbie on meth, or maybe he was on meth , anyway all he did was put block off plates over the water pump holes, filled the engine with water to about an 1" below where the water neck is and then put a plate over it, no circulation. When I did my first motor,I wanted to at least circulate the water thru the block and heads to eliminate hotspots, it had a 12x18 Permacool little radiator on it, it had no heating problems. I'm installing a aluminum radiator in the build I'm doing now, don't need it for the methanol, but if Lem ever convinces me to try gas, it will be there.

Did not hot lap much, and my first block was filled to the water pump holes, new block will not be filled. Mine would get to about 210/215 at the big end, it would be back down to 170/180 by the time I got back to trailer.

Dave,

My first dragster was a 98 Undercover. I ran a 557 on methanol in it. C8VE block filled to the bottom of the water pump holes. The car had a Volkswagen radiator/fan mounted over the trans and -8 AN braided lines. Never and issue with cooling. Had to lean it out to get it warmed up. The 2nd dragster was the 07 American. A460 block/no fill. uprigth rad behid the seat and -10AN lines. My Thunderbird had -12AN lines only because the radiator has 1" npt fittings and I didn't want to double up reducers. They do make a -12 to 1" npt adapter, but not a -10 to 1".

I guess my question is, is hot blocking it a reasonable solution for a bracket car on methanol, or should I go with a small radiator?

dfree383 wrote:I guess my question is, is hot blocking it a reasonable solution for a bracket car on methanol, or should I go with a small radiator?

For brackets I would want at least a small radiator. For a heads up, class or index car you might get away without one as they generally have longer between rounds.

In the later rounds of a bracket race they may be calling you right back to staging after each round. Just enough time to refuel and go back up.

Stupid Question How long do you think the small coolant system would run on gas?

My engine block is poured solid and I don't run any water yet. On the dyno, we made hits on methanol about every 10 minutes. On gas, we would have to wait about 20 minutes. I may try cooling the heads and see what happens when I get it in the truck. If it works well enough, I'm going to try and finish tuning on gas.

Dave, How long would you run it? What Temp would you start the pulls and how hot was it at the end? Did you watch the oil temp?

We didn't have the oil temp on the dyno. They dyno a lot of turbo methanol engines(dry) at this place and they use the head bolts and a temp gun. We would warm the engine up until it got to 180* on the headbolt and then shut it off. When it reached 140, we would make the first pull. A pull would consist of the engine idling for about 20-25 seconds, then reving to 3-4000 for a few seconds. and then wide-open and apply the load at 4500 rpm and rev @ 600 rpm per second to 7500, then let it idle for about 5 seconds. I checked the ending temp at 160-170. The gas ending temps would be about 135 starting and ending at 180. I could put my hand on the oil tank for about two seconds before it was too hot. The temp gun doesn't work good on aluminum, that's why they temp the headbolts. I checked the steel drain plug on the oil tank once at 140*.

dfree383 wrote:Stupid Question How long do you think the small coolant system would run on gas?

Dave my cooling system is small on my truck it only has the factory v6 rad in it it's tall but only 1 thin row on gas by end of a run it is up to 220* when I pull in the water box I try to keep it down to 160* some time it hard just depends on how many in the staging lanes on the way back to the pit i cost alot it will get to about 230 before i pitted.I haven't got to make any runs yet on methanol to see how it does it set up now just no $$$$ to try it.

I dont run a radiator in the 69, I do have a small tank and circulate the water between the block and heads..........you need to have some sort of an expansion tank on it if you do it this way. The 69 is injected, and we tow it to the pits after the run..but only because the class i run all the other guys tow and I get stuck behind them so screw it. It wont get hot at all if I drive it the full circuit. Now take in mind this is not a bracket car anymore, but I have hot lapped it with no issues............in fact even in the heat the block heaters are always plugged in.

For an alky carbed bracket deal put some sort of radiator on it, our smallblock has one of the real small Griffens on it with an electric fan..........fan is rarely used..but just in case you do hot lap it and it does get warm you wont have to run it fat to cool it off..just use the fan..the oil will stay a lot cleaner if its set up and run this way.


An injected deal will run cooler than a carb...if they are both set up right..............its a fuel volume thing.