Be Cool, Don’t Blow Your Head Gasket!

Like many other Falcon owners my car was running a little hot last summer; it also had a bad habit of ejecting about ½ a pint of coolant after a run. I didn’t do anything till this spring when she came out of hibernation. I decided that the cooling system needed an overhaul/ upgrade as the 1.6 carb engine was changed for a 2 litre Pinto injection.
I fitted an expansion tank to my Cortina cooling system thinking this would cure the overheating- No such luck. The diagnosis was head failure probably as a result of overheating and loss of coolant.
The gasses from the engine were escaping into the coolant giving high pressure and overheating.

The cure was head removal and skimming, a new higher spec twin core radiator plus the expansion tank.  I also removed the traditional JBA grille bars and fitted a diagonal wire mesh grille instead, this Bentley style mesh looks great and is far better at letting cool air into the radiator.
The radiator was shrouded round so that all the cool air went through it and not around as before.
I kept the Sierra viscous fan as it is much larger and working OK. An electric fan could be mounted in front of the radiator with the new grille as there is more room for it.
 

The whole system now holds six and a half litres of coolant which is much more than before. I have a photo above which show the small flat expansion tank from a Volvo 340 which is fed from the base of the radiator or the bottom hose via a T piece and the overflow outlet on the top of the radiator.
The radiator cap is replaced by a plain one which has no blow off, filling is effected by using the expansion filler cap and the level can be easily seen through the tank.

The all important heater bypass hose also has a bleed off to remove air from the heater which is higher than the top of the radiator. I used copper plumbing fittings to make this up. The heater in the Pinto system is ‘on’ all the time, we turn it ‘off’ by a water valve.
If you don’t allow the flow to bypass the heater valve you will overheat the head/ inlet manifold when the engine is warming up. This also causes hot start problems on carb engines. The principle is the same for all Pinto engines in JBA models. See photo.

All is now working fine and the temp gauge is rock steady now no matter how much I thrash the car.
If you find that your Falcon suffers from the same symptoms act now before it’s too late. 

Gerard North East.