Howdy Everyone:
As to the discussion on overheating Tigers and stock-vs-modified cars,
the factory was aware of cooling problems with Tigers from day one. One
of the Tiger books (I think Mike Taylor's) has a picture of Rootes
Tiger testing in Morrocco to attempt a fix. It shows a Tiger with a
louvered hood. This did help, but was vetoed since they thought that oil
spray from the engine compartment would filter through and foul the
windshield.
The way I look at it, if you're using your car as an everyday vehicle
(which I do with my Alpine and used to with my Tiger), it needs to be
able to sit in stop and go rush hour freeway traffic and not "loose its
cool". I don't think even a stock Tiger (and I know a stock Alpine
can't, from experience) could do that so you've got to upgrade the
cooling system and get more air out of the engine compartment somehow to
do it. One tip I'd recommend that isn't stock is the one I mentioned
earlier. When I put louvers in my Tiger hood (after having added air
conditioning to it), water temperature dropped 15 to 20 degrees. In stop
and go traffic you could see the heat gushing out of those louvers. The
other benefit was that when I parked my car for a half hour or so and
came back to it, the heat had exited through the louvers, not baked the
engine and passenger compartment. Before I did this, under the same
scenario, when I restarted the car the needle had barely moved down. I
also later added a six blade Ford fan, which increased the air velocity
through the radiator, and increased the flow of heat through the louvers
and made even more of an improvement. Of course, I had also ugraded my
radiator at the start of my AC project so each one of these items helped
a bit.
(By the way, two rows of louvers were cut, one over each valve cover. I
don't know if this was the most efficient placing or not, but it looked
pretty "cool")
Just a couple of ideas to think of.
Hope to see all of you at Tigers United at Big Bear Lake, California,
June 26, 27 and 28!!!! Any questions about the event? Let me know.
Steve Sage
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