I know that this has been discussed, but my searches either find too much, or nothing (which means I 'm searching the wrong terms.).

That said.

The cooling flaps for my engine don't seem to want to pop up. The spring is there, but it does not have the oompf to open the springs. The engine is out of the car, so now is the time to fix it, or choose to just leave the springs open.

I have the diaphram and wire on the car, but my instinct tells me to leave it unhooked and just run it with the flaps open. My rational is simple. If the system is gummed up now, and the flaps won't "fail open" as they are supposed to, I am worried that down the line they will get gummed up again, and some day I'll cook the engine because the flaps are gummed again and failed closed.

It seems to me that the risk of having them failed closed is worse then the longer warm up time.

Given that my car has no heat, and there for will only be driven in ambient temps above 60F (and usually in ambient temps around 80 or higher) do I need the flaps, or could I just leave them open with no real harm done.

Zach

Zach,

I think most of the cars we both saw at the East Coast Cookout had either no flaps or them disconnected in fail safe. The only time I regret having mine in permanent 'failsafe' is when I drive on 40-50 degree mornings. I don't have heat, it's just a pain when the dizzy is trying to run advanced timing and the motor won't have it. It takes me at least 15-20 minutes of highway driving to get oil temps in the middle of the gauge with a stock 2.0 in those air temps.

That said, on a nice Maryland spring-autumn day, I'm at a great oil temp in less than 5 minutes. And the car is running smooth in less than a minute.

Go fail safe. There's no harm I know of other than a longer warm up time.

Zach,

Try to work the spring around the shaft a few times, kinda like you're winding up a cox .049 bee engine to start it up, get some more tension in the spring that way buy trying to wind it up some more. I'm going to be putting the flaps back on my engine tomorrow so, once i get that back together i'll tell you what I ended up doing!

Pat

The flaps rod rides in plastic 1/2 bushings. See if they are correctly seated in the blower housing grooves. The only other thing I can think of is that the transverse rod is bent.

In mild climates, I have seen engines that have the rod assembly removed and a screw placed in the trailing edge of the oil cooler flap to hold it down (directs cooling air thru the cooler). The engines run just fine.

Only loss is in quick warm up. If you can stand the concept of accelerated wear due to slow warm up, then there is no problem.

another possibility is the spring should push/apply tension to a boss on the fan housing. like said, you may have to pretension the spring but i don't recall the tension being very much to work the flaps.

If the engine is out, it is pretty easy to check for binding, etc. I think the key item is as some said before: the thermostat and flaps are there to make the engine warm up quicker, which helps minimize wear, better gas milage, and better drivability at startup on cold days. To me the wear is the most important reason to get it working properly. If it isn't binding, it doesn't take much force on the spring to raise it.

The zambeziteen has been carb'd and sans thermostat since before I drove it home from CA almost two years ago. The temps had to get down below thirty before I noticed any evedence of oil not getting hot enough. And then only because it didn't get enough driving time on one trip to warm up thoroughly. And it drives pretty well at 30 degrees after a minute or two.