Since he's actually right, and running without a thermostat or restrictor plate is known to cause cooling problems, which of you is the greater idiot?

Not necessarily. For a given situation there is an ideal flow rate that will remove heat at the greatest rate. Reducing flow will not remove heat fast enough and greater flow will not transfer as much heat to the coolant. Heat transfer is not an instantaneous process, so the coolant needs to be in the engine for the right amount of time, not the shortest amount. The system is designed to keep the coolant flow rate close to ideal as often as possible. Anything that reduces or increases coolant flow (including removing flow restrictions) will change that.

Cavitation reduces flow, it doesn't stop it.

It doesn't need a "fix" because it's not broken. The cooling system has been engineered to work across a wide range of driving conditions, and is obviously optimised for what it does most of the time. Running at a constant high engine speed is not exactly normal usage for a street car, but constant low-medium engine speed is. As is extended idle and low-speed time. It's far more important for a street car cooling system to work properly in these conditions.

Underdrive the water pump, as is done on race-prepped engines. Then you risk cooling problems at low rpm.

 

when you increase the amount of water flowing to it, each water has to pick up less heat for the same effect.

 

Can you rephrase that so it makes sense?

 

I hadn't considered that just about any car could face wp cavitation at high RPM's, I was guessing that this was more an issue for rotaries.

 

cavitation can also be very destructive to any pump. It can severely pit and in some instances crack and break the blades of the pump. Effectively, as the pump blade hits a bit of low pressure vapor, it speeds up (cause theres less drag/pressure holding it back). Then it hits the far side of this bubble and rapidly slows down. This pump now not only requires a lot more power to drive, but the wear rate on all the components is increased, proportionally to the severity of cavitation.

Disclaimer: This is all for centrifugal pumps in general, not specifically our water pump

 

Most of the stuff bolted to our engines is no different to that on a piston engine, and works just the same. People make a big deal about rotaries being so different, but until you actually need to pull the engine apart, they're not really.

 

I realize that, but like I said before I thought since rotaries can sustain higher RPM's that the problem might be isolated to rotaries.

 

Most motorcycle engines run much higher RPMs than a rotary.
As NZC pointed out, once you get past the shortblock there is little difference between our engines and a piston unit.

 

I know that, too, man. But aren't motorcycle motors usually air cooled? Thus, not even having a water pump?

 

NzConvert, I agree with what you are saying about the coolant flow, now my other question is, will the slower or more controlled flow of coolant disipate more heat at the radiator since its regulated instead of flowing quickly and not being allowed to disipate all its heat?

I just want to make sure im on the right track.

And I forget who was compairing a CPU heat sink and fan to our cooling system, but I would not use that as an example for coolant absorbing the heat, instead use that for the fan that is drawing air through the radiator or use it for air cooled engines.

 

Yes, but you will still run the coldest possible with no thermostat at all.

 

Plenty of bike motors are water cooled. It's a bit hard to air-cool a motor when the bike's covered in fairings, i.e. most modern sports bikes.

Yep, it's basically the same process. Heat is conducted from the metal engine parts to the coolant, the coolant travels to the radiator, the heat is conducted from the coolant to the radiator then from the radiator to the air passing through it.

Only at low engine load, because the engine is being dramatically over-cooled. At high load the lack of flow restriction hampers the cooling system's efficiency and overheating can result. This is a long-know phenomenon.

 

That and you can get hot spots in your housings and such running without a thermo..but yep i agree totally ..

 

By slowing the water down, thermostat installed, it will be allowed to absorb heat from high temp areas (hotspots) on the block more effeciently than allowing the water to flow past unregulated. This would result in a more even temperature across the block as a whole by keeping the hotspots cooler and the cooler areas warmer.

 

Yeah, that was the only way I could make sense of you saying 'evenly'. I just wanted to be sure because it seems there are a lot of people around here that spout off retarded crap without thinking about it. I've been mistaken before, too, but I can be reasoned with...

 

I thought about what I wrote before I wrote it, I just tried to make it sound simple for the people who spout off retarded crap
Its all about inspiring thought...