I have a 1976 2.0 Djet stock. I just purchased the car last month.


After a complete warmup after 20+ min of driving the oil temp (measured using dipstick gage) reaches 260 and stay there for the rest of the ride. I've gone for about a 1 hour ride. I have all of the tins and the flaps work and are fully open after a few minuites of driving. I've changed the oil (just wanted to make sure oil is fresh after purchase 10W40). The motor runs good and idles smooth even at 260deg.


I have checked the following:

1. Timing set to 27 deg at 3500RPM with vac lines disconected.
2. Timing does advance when accelerating (I also conected a hand vac to test the advance on the distributor)
3. Fuel preasure at @35psi (I will reduce to 29-30 today)
4. No vacuum leaks
5. I've checked the presure sensor for vacuum leaks and resistance across the windings and all were good.

I have a reciept from a reputable repair shop where the previous owner had the valves adjusted and tune up within 500 miles of my purchase.

I reduced the fuel preasure to 31 and the temp only went up to 240 after a long run 25 miles and 10 of that on the interstate with RPMs 3500-4000.
My guess is that the preasue was to high and the injectors couldn't overcome the presure to open enough causing a lean condition. I'm going to lower to 29lbs to see if I see more benifit. I hope that none of the injectors were damaged, when I turn the car off the preasure holds for a long time before it bleads down.


What do I check next? Thanks for all of the help.

Problem solved.
I decied to clean up the engine compartment so I started with getting ride of the decel valve by plugging up the connections at the intake and removing the rest. Then I noticed that a previous owner conected the vacuum line that orginally went from the fan shroud to the charcol canister and conected it directly from the fan shroud to the air intake. This was bad for 2 resons, 1 unfiltered air was going from the fan to the throttle body and 2 air that should be going to cool the oil cooler was being sucked out by the intake. I plugged both ends and the temp now stays arround 200 even after an hour on the interstate. The temp did go to about 210 when I was doing about 4000 rpms for 20 miles but it fell back to 200 when I went back below 3500 rpms.

That is too hot. About the hottest you want to see is 230 for oil temps.

Is your oil cooler clean? Or filled with crud between the cooling vanes?

Zach

... mouse nests over the oil cooler? (... or some other obstruction to air flow...)

As best I can tell from underneath the oil cooler is clean, I tred using compressed air to clean it out and nothing came out. When running I can feel a lot of air being blown down from the top of the motor.

It's the oil cooler, or the temp sender is not correctly calibrated.

Or there is too much pressure and the cooler is being closed out of the circuit.

What is your oil pressure when cruising?
Are you running a big pump? Or stock?

Zach

I believe I have a stock oil pump, I do not have an oil presure gage except the light. does the motor have to come out to change out the oil pump?

It can be done but much easier with the motor off. You will have to remove the fan and it's sitting behind it .

Verify that the temps you see are accurate.
You can use an infrared thermometer.



Shoot the oil filter body when warmed up.


KT

I have a dipstick thermometer

boil some water and see if the dipstick gauge is accurate, likely it is, but worth a shot.

Is it still running the smog pump?

I do not have the smog pump.
Any other suggestions

Since your not familiar with the gauge, boil it and see.

Get a inspection mirror and check the fan, I've seen junk ingested down there not visible topside.

Other than that, it's time to get it on a tailpipe sniffer and see if it's going lean or something odd due to bad MPS or ???

Verify that the flap that closes over the cooler is going all the way down over the cooler. I just had this problem. My oil temps all of a sudden were 20* hotter for no good reason. If the coil is mounted on the tin over cylinder #4 remove the rear mounting screw for the coil. Put a long thin screwdriver into the hole and push on the edge of that cooling flap to see if it moves down. Mine would not. I needed to remove the tin on that side to remove a piece of plastic that got sucked in and wedged. Another possibility according to Mcmark, the rod that connects the cooling flaps is twisted.

I can hear the flap move, could missing gromits around the head temp sensor contribut higher temps?

It is unlikely that they would contribute to higher oil temps. Higher head temps, possibly.

Inspect the fan, make sure the plug in the timing hole in the fan shroud is capped. Make sure the cooling flaps open all the way. Verify your thermometer; I think you're close enough to sea level that water should still boil right around 212F.

Get a mechanical oil pressure gauge (hopefully you can borrow one) to check the oil pressure. The pressure will go down as the oil warms up, and you don't want it much if any under 10 PSI at idle. (The light will usually go on at about 3 PSI, which is very low indeed.)

After that, you may need to pull off the right-side engine tin and inspect everything.

At an actual temperature of 260F, most oils will be failing in some way. Either breaking down, or losing pressure or viscosity or film strength. If that is how hot your oil actually gets, you need to do something about it.

--DD

It's amazing how important the rubber plugs in the are for cooling. I seated all of the spark plug seals, installed a oil presure boot ( had a new one in my box) and made a seal for the head temp sensor hole. Now after 30+ miles the temp never went above 220. This new car to me is a learning experance. The previous owners were not mechanically inclined. I do know how to do my research ( another engineer) . Thanks for all of the help

I'd be happier with temps between 180-190° under normal conditions and max of 220° on a very hot day while track driving.


KT

I feel the same way. I will continue to look for things that are making it run this hot. I only have the original oil cooler. Looking at the tins it looks like someone took them off while the motor was in the car and didn't get them back on correctly. On the passenger side the tin is Lower than the seal by about 1/2 inch.

More work to do on this car, I guess it will never end. I bought it to give something to do, I got want I was looking for. I could spend the next few months taking it apart cleaning it and putting it back together correctly.

Gunny, explain to me again what you meant my seating the plugs? Are you talking about the spark plugs?

The spark plug wire seals around the tins so that the fan air is contained to the lower part of the motor.

Got it. Thanks.

Are you using a front airdam on the car? like the flex dam?

Are the under car air diffusers in place?


KT

Is this the correct weight oil???? What is the ambient temperature? What brand oil? Is it synthetic? What octane fuel? Ethanol or not? Aren't these important variables?

20/50 for me.


KT

I changed to 10w40 for the winter. Ambient temp is below 80.
Regular oil not synthetic. No front air dam and the under car air diffusers are in place. I using 87 octain ethinol fuel. I have tried 93 ethinol free but no change in run temps. This is a 76 model which I have read do run a little hotter because of the exhaust? Catalitic convert has been removed and so has the air pump.

I wouldn't drive it until you get the cooling shrouds sorted out. 260* is killing your engine.

How does the car run otherwise? How does it idle? Timing could be so far off that it's causing temp issues.

People have asked, but I didn't see a reply to this question too - Are all the fan blades in place? You can stick your hand and feel around the inner circumference of the fan to make sure it's not missing a number of vanes/blades. Missing one wouldn't cause this type of problem, but if it's missing a lot then you know it's probably the problem.

We don't know the head temps. People have stated that the air cooling will cause high head temps, but that does ultimately lead to high oil temps. High oil temps won't lead to high head temps. You need more data. A head temp sensor and gauge aren't very expensive. Head temps fluctuate much faster than oil temps too, so it's a good indicator of how your motor is running.

How long does it take for your oil temps to get to 260? AND have you tested the dipstick tester as recommended by a number of people here? Just boil water and it should indicate around 212* or a few degrees less if you're above sea level.

We'll figure this out, but you have to do more leg work than just checking the temp with a dip stick thermometer.

When I bought my car it did not have a CHT tin grommet, an oil pressure sensor grommet, and not all the spark plug wire grommets were in place. Correcting this did not make a noticeable difference in oil temps for me. I wonder if the 40 degree temp drop you saw when doing the same was a coincidence?

I too run about 180-190 on hot days, 150+ during cooler weather like now with temps in the 40-60s.

I agree with the others in regard to checking accuracy of your sender/gauge, whether the oil cooler is blocked, fan sucked something in, etc.

Update:
after dropping my fuel preasure from 35 to 29.5 and sealing almost all of the holes in the tins I am running just under 220 after a long hard run of about 30 miles. I still have an ooil dipstick temp gage so I'm farly sure that is an accurate reading. I still need to add the gromits around the heater hoses and maybe a couple more, I'm still looking for any leaks in the coolong system.

I'm at least in the comfortable range at 215 -220. I'm thinking that about 200 should be good as running to low a temp will not get ride of all of the moisture.

The car runs good without any smoke at startup or while driving. It idals at about 1300 for a few seconds then settles at about 1000 RPMs for all temps. It does have a hesitation around 3000 rpms when I push t the pedal to the floor it accelerates good until 3000 rpms hesitates then continues to accelerate, this is the same at all temps. Now that it is only going to 215-220 after 30 min drive in 70-80 degree weather it seems to run the same.

I will try the boiling water test with the dipstick temp gage.

I used my phone to take a video of the fan blades and found that they are all in place and look good. I can not see any debris looking through the fan blades.

This morning driving to work the 20 miles and 30 min drive I didn't get close to 190 degrees, it was only about 35 outside.

I will check the head temps with a digital hand held next time I get it up to temp.

Thanks for all of the help so far, I have learned that air flow and containment is very important. How hard is it to get the tin off that covers the oil cooler?

Awesome!

It's a PIA to remove the cover if you're running FI still. You need to remove the manifold on that side (which I find to be annoying due to the battery tray), remove heater components, remove the coil (if it's mounted there), spark plug wires... you may have to loosen the screws on a few other connecting pieces of sheet metal too.

It's totally doable! However it's REALLY easy to break old FI wires, crack the manifold gaskets that attach the intake manifolds to the plenum... probably good to order new parts before you dig in. Also plan on replacing the thick manifold to head gasket too. If you remove your injectors (you don't need to), replace those seals as well.

Am I missing anything?

Problem solved.
I decied to clean up the engine compartment so I started with getting ride of the decel valve by plugging up the connections at the intake and removing the rest. Then I noticed that a previous owner conected the vacuum line that orginally went from the fan shroud to the charcol canister and conected it directly from the fan shroud to the air intake. This was bad for 2 resons, 1 unfiltered air was going from the fan to the throttle body and 2 air that should be going to cool the oil cooler was being sucked out by the intake. I plugged both ends and the temp now stays arround 200 even after an hour on the interstate. The temp did go to about 210 when I was doing about 4000 rpms for 20 miles but it fell back to 200 when I went back below 3500 rpms.

Well that's interesting. I would never had guessed that one. Good job!

Good job gunny,
The first thing I did to mine was drop the engine and clean the leaves/rats nests from around the cylinders. I bet you could benifit from that also. Mine ran rough when I got it so I knew I had some issues. While the engine was out, I checked out all of the electrical and found lots of bad connections and brittle wires. I cleaned/replaced as necessary as well as cleaning and resealing the engine. Also got rid of the smog stuff and backdated the exhaust to an earlier 2.0 style SSI ex's and a Triad muffler. Even though mine was rebuilt 30,000 miles ago with hydraulic lifters, it seems to run as strong an most any earlier 2.0. I assume you have removed the air injection to the heads at the exhaust ports. I'll send a pic or two for what I did to cap off the air injection tubes at the heads. I am trying to do things that are easily reversed just in case some day the car needs to go back completely stock for smog purposes. Be sure to keep all of the old parts.
In the top of the engine pic, you can see the brass caps on the injection tubes just in front of the intake runners.
Tom

Another pic with the brass caps, previous one didn't show them.
Tom

I have plans for a engine removial in the spring for cleaning and dressing up of the tins. I want clean and paint the tins, clean the motor, paint the intakes and clean the engine bay.

the tiny bit of air that is pushed out to the charcoal canister in no way robs enough air to make the difference on your oil cooling

I'm glad that its running better.... but there is no way a 1/2 inch ID hose worth of air is going to make 60degrees difference in your oil temperature.

remember that same amount of air was going to the charcoal canister from the factory. Not with vacuum assist, but still the oil cooler is getting air from the fan.

still glad its running cooler.
all of the things you are fixing in the air flow will help cumulatively.

I agree, I already got it down to below 220 with all of the other things like installing all of the plugs for the sensors and seating the plug wire grommets. I think I got another 10-15 degrees from the hose from the fan shroud. When the canister is connected the flow thru the hose is not that much. But with the hose going straight to the air intake it not only had the fan pushing but also the intake sucking air.

I'm just glad I got the temps down to a good temp.

I am with Brant on this one. Almost posted the same message when you first said it was fixed, but didn't want to burst your bubble.

Could it be that it's running cooler because the ambient outside temps are much lower now that it's winter? That can affect cooling a lot. Have you taken the car on any 20 - 30 minute freeway/interstate or fun back road runs where you push it a bit since the fix?

Everyone here wants your car to be running correctly, but your fix(es) don't quite add up. Hoping we're wrong of course!

I did take it on a long ride. I went 130 miles mostly on interstate nonstop. At speed I was running over 3500 rpms for extended periods. The highest my temps got was 210. I am still alittle concerned because it was cold out, below 50. The next day I drove home with the same temps and a stretch at 4000 rpms. I have small tires 205/55r15.

Not to beat a dead horse, but have you checked the accuracy of your dipstick gauge, or used an infra-red? I would want to know for certain that my readings are correct.

I did variety the dipstick reading using boiling water.

I may not be able to tell what cooled the temps down because during this time I also took apart the dizzy and cleaned it, replaced the points and condenser, cleaned the contacts and fixed the missing ground wire from the points plate to the plate.

I also took all of the connectors off of each sensor measured the resistance and cleaned them before reinstalling them.

I would expect 'normal' running temps in winter to be well below 200°.


170-180°


KT