Water Temps?

#1

What is the typical water temp for a e30 being drive on the street. Also where are you taking your temps in the cooling curcuit?

I just took my car out for a test drive after doing some work. My gauge climbed into the 190 - 200 range. My sending unit is in line with the top straight hose and I think that is outbound form the motor pre radiator. Does that temp sound right for where it is being taken during a quick street drive. I was not revving much past 4500 to keep the sound down a bit.

On track it does not go over 210.

Thanks

#2

Sounds about right to me. I have my gauge temp sensor mounted in a spare hole in the thermostat housing. While that position is between the thermostat and the radiator, it still has the advantage of getting thermal conduction from the block via the thermostat housing. So even if there is a low coolant situation the gauge should track block temp better than if in the hose.

#3

My sensor is in the thermostat cluster. I think it’s OEM. I’m planning on wiring in a warning light by putting a sensor into the top hose, an idea I stole from Steve DeVinney. I haven’t yet figured out what temp of a warning light switch I should use yet tho. I started a thread over at BF.c about this and answers were all over the map. I’m leaning towards 225 or 230.

My summer track coolant temps used to be 220-225, acknowledging that VDO gauges don’t exactly have laboratory accuracy. But now that I have an aftermarket oil cooler, coolant temps are running <210.

In a somewhat related note, I now have oil temp sensors before and after my oil cooler. They are switched to a single gauge. My oil cooler is 3.5X as large as the OEM oil cooler. The first trial of this indicates that my oil cooler is responsible for 20-25deg of cooling. If I recall correctly, hot oil temps were 240ish.

#4

Thanks for the input. Interesting how the new oil cooler helped bring down the coolant temp. Makes sense since its all hot liquid in the block. Cooling one will help cool the other. I wont sweat (no pun intended) my coolant temp for now.