Coolant Passageways

[SolarSteve]

When my 1.6 is stone cold and the T-stat is closed, does coolant pass through the radiator?  If not does it flow through the radiator as soon as it begins to open or only at full open?

I am considering blocking some of the radiator with some plywood to get more heat, but I'm not sure if it will do anything.  It seems to get up to temperature at the same rate as any other time of year and right now it is about 5F.  I don't have much heat in the cabin due to a Frybrid system that I installed in series with the core.  I had it in parallel originally, but it didn't send enough coolant to the VO system.

I plan to eventually ad a Mercedes aux coolant pump to try to alliviate some of the problem.

thanks

[8v-of-fury]

The coolant comes from the head, and goes to the top of the rad, and then down to the Thermo.

FWIW, blocking the rad doesn't really help the warm up much, it helps keep it up after you get it warm. Diesel's do not produce much heat, due to being almost double as efficient as their gasser brethrens. So having the cold air enter the engine bay and flow over the engine actually does steal away quite a bit of heat from it.

When the t-stat is closed the coolant goes down from the head to the water pump and back up to through the engine. Coolant will flow through the rad when it is starting to open and fully open.

[rabbitman]

The coolant comes from the head, and goes to the top of the rad, and then down to the Thermo.

FWIW, blocking the rad doesn't really help the warm up much, it helps keep it up after you get it warm. Diesel's do not produce much heat, due to being almost double as efficient as their gasser brethrens. So having the cold air enter the engine bay and flow over the engine actually does steal away quite a bit of heat from it.

When the t-stat is closed the coolant goes down from the head to the water pump and back up to through the engine. Coolant will flow through the rad when it is starting to open and fully open.

What he said, cardboard works lots better than plywood .

Be careful about covering the rad up, it'll be fine until you work it real hard then it'll overheat.

[8v-of-fury]

Be careful about covering the rad up, it'll be fine until you work it real hard then it'll overheat.

Definitely keep BOTH eyes on that temp gauge, if she blows.. she BLOWS. IT will not be pretty lol

[SolarSteve]

Thanks for the info.

Last winter I put a piece of cardboard in from of the rad, but I left the area in front of the fan uncovered incase it started to get hot.  The first own had a problem with the electric fan so he just wired it to a switch in the dash, so I do keep a close eye on the gauge.

I was thinking of covering more of the area in front of the fan this winter due to how cold it is and that last winter I never needed to turn the fan on.  (I almost never need to use the fan, even in summer, because the Frybrid system takes a lot of the heat out of the coolant).

Thanks again for the help and advice.

[rabbitman]

I usually just cover the passenger side half of the the tranny, the main thing covering it does is blocks the cold air from directly hitting the engine.