454BB over heating!

Maybe an air dam would help direct air up to the radiator  

I am wonder if maybe my fan just isn't doing the trick...thinking i should go with a duel 12inch fan.  

worth a try also mabe put in some water wetter you can get it at any auto parts store  

Locking out your advance and driving at part throttle could do it.  It's fine for wot drag strip use, but you should have vacuum and mechanical advance for part throttle driving.

Also, regarding the fan, make sure it's actually pulling air thru the rad when it's on.  When you put a fan in a puller position, you have to reverse the wires and the blades.  Otherwise it tries to push the air out thru the front of the rad.  This isn't a big problem when sitting still in the driveway with the hood open.  But when you're moving down the road, the normal airflow from the car going forward and that from the fan pushing out the front will work against each other and lead to overheating.  Hold a piece of light ribbon or string behind the fan when it's on to see which direction the airflow is going.  

the odd thing is the guy who had the car before me was driving it around and never had the over heating issue.

when you put your hand in front of the fan you can clearly see its pulling air through the radiator. It is a good fan its 2500cfm but for some reason I am thinking a duel 2700cfm set of fans would push me over the edge.

I am also running water wetter right now.

I will try and put a 160 thermostat in the car and see if maybe that gets a jump on it. I will also lower the fan from going on at 180deg to 170deg.  

Here are pictures to my set up.  

I noticed you aren't running a bypass hose from the intake manifold to the water pump. With the t-stat closed and without this hose, there is no coolant circulating. So the coolant that is in the heads and block need to heat up enough to open the t-stat, maybe to the point where the coolant is hot in the block/heads but cooler in the intake manifold. If it could circulate, the water pump could move that hot coolant from the block/heads to the t-stat and it would open sooner.  

+1  

Good eye!  
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The Silver Buick- '77 Skylark coupe w/ a Fuel Injected Buick 455&TKO-600, '72 Centurion Conv't - 455w/TH400, '67 T-bird 4Dr (suicide) w/428&C6. Needing to replace a '69 Firebird 400.

http://www.bangshift.com/forum/index.php?topic=6189.0

Yep, me and my Fiance went to a car show and I noticed that also.

will get this done this weekend and report back  

cool man let us know  

I have had 3 water pumps from NAPA fail this summer and 2 last year. The impellers come loose from the shaft and will not pump correctly. The pump can still move a small amount of water at idle but will slip and not pump enough water at off idle speeds. I replaced my NAPA pump with one from a different parts store and did'nt have any problems again. A few other race car drivers I know have also had the same problem with NAPA water pumps this year. Once they purchased pumps from other sources it fixed the over heating problems they had as well. I prefer NAPA for most of my parts but I will not use a water pump from there again.  

Thanks for that info Chris, I have done the bypass and will see how that works when I get a chance to take it out.

thanks everyone for the help so far.  

no prob