200tdi debate. Elecy or Viscous???

Hi all,
So was off-roading yesterday for about 2 or 3 hrs quite a slow pace and lots of revving. Looked down and realised my temp gauge was right up near the top of gauge. Managed to switch it off before I boiled it.

I'm in a massive strop at this point as I've just spent alot of moneys on a new cyclinder head and didn't want it warping!

Anyway, realised my viscous is not doing anything and just spins round slowly wanting to be a cabbage.

I'm reading that putting a big elecy fan on instead is still not as great as the viscous at drawing heat away??? I understand viscous is more reliable etc etc!

Question, is there anyway to fix the fan on viscous in place perminetly so it spins at a high speed same as the engine? Genuine land rover new viscous units are very pricey and trying to avoid it if I can.

My engine seemed fine after it had cooled down and I got driving again. Just shows the 200's do get hot if just plodding about revving with no fans!

Your coupling unit has bust basically, you can probably remove it and then peg the fan to spin all the time though


or if you want leccy I'm selling one

Sending a message to ya!

If you decide you wanna stick with a viscous I got a goodun you can have fer postage

Replied

An electric fan is better than a mechanical fan IMO. If you are idling in traffic and the engine starts to heat up, the mechanical fan is at low constant speed where as the electric fan would kick in and cool down the engine.

I have been swapping out mechanical fans and running many electric ones on BMWs, not because of the poor mechanical fan performance but because of the room needed for all the big engine swaps. On some cars the AC fan kicks in as supplementary cooling

You can run both if you wish for redundancy. I will be running an electric one in my Landy.

You can also install a temperature gauge with a programable warning light which I intend to do as well. I used Marshall gauges when I had my performance shop, they are made in the US, accurate and a great quality.

Forgot to mention we have turbocharged engines we built and swapped into smaller BMWs running on electric only...Spal fans and never even got anywhere close to overheating.

You can also run a cooler thermostat, James posted the part number when I requested that info.

There should be no debate over electric or mechanical, electrics been around a long time and have proven their place in auto cooling.

.

You could read my thread which has a bit about cooling. One guy said he is running without a fan, can't see how that's possible.

http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f7/were-lr-designers-trying-heat-up-200tdi-charge-air-254773.html

Barbados said:

You could read my thread which has a bit about cooling. One guy said he is running without a fan, can't see how that's possible.

http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f7/were-lr-designers-trying-heat-up-200tdi-charge-air-254773.html

Click to expand...

Quite a few do, I did through winter but always refitted the fan for summer.

Both my 200's were run as Di's though and through Series rads so don't know how much difference that makes

blue beasty said:

Quite a few do, I did through winter but always refitted the fan for summer.

Both my 200's were run as Di's though and through Series rads so don't know how much difference that makes

Click to expand...

Winter I can understand but I got the impression he was talking year round.

No fan on mine for the last 7 years. Never a problem.
I'd suggest the op has a partially blocked rad or suchlike.

had similar probs, kept getting hot ,after changing everything, turned out to be the outside of the rad blocked with dried mud, especially behind the winch,after removing the rad, it took half an hour with the jetwash before water could pass through the fins,
since then no more getting hot

what condition is the rad in, had the fan off mine for a while with no probs then suddenly started getting warm on long pulls, so put it back on, fixed it for a while, then it got worse and worse.
turned out my rad looked ok, but when i dropped it on the floor, (after buying a new one) all the fins fell out they looked fine but not a chance were they going to conduct any heat.

Barbados said:

You could read my thread which has a bit about cooling. One guy said he is running without a fan, can't see how that's possible.

http://www.landyzone.co.uk/lz/f7/were-lr-designers-trying-heat-up-200tdi-charge-air-254773.html

Click to expand...

I ran mine without a fan for a year. Have since fitted a leccy fan (off a Mundano) but in over 12 months it has never switched on. This is just for on-road and greenlaning use, I'm sure it would be different with heavy off-road use. It's a 200, known for cool runnings.

Big advantages for me: less energy drain with fan off, and I can ensure it doesn't come on when wading.

I've run a 200tdi for a long time without a fan. Heavy towing and traffic made no difference. I also ran a 19J turbo diesel in a 109 for a year with no fan. It didn't get the same heavy use but still never got hot. If you suffer from overheating in the UK something's not right with your cooling system.

Cooling system is all fine but thanks for your comments,

Evil I've sourced another kenlowe from a local scrapy for free so I couldn't refuse,

The rad is all clear with very few bent fins at all, has been flushed about 4 times in the last 2 months with new coolant, has got a new thermostat and new cylinder head so no problems there.

It only got hot that once when I was offroading and revving it had trying to get up a hill where I had no air flow through the rad so I'm guessing the hour drive to the site, with 2 hours of driving about slowly revving beforehand had just got hot enough for the rad to become in sufficient at cooling it.

I'll only be able to tell when I next go offroading for a day and get stuck somwhere revving the engine hard and no air through the rad, At wich point I can switch on me new fan!!



Thanks

Ps, I've been running it for a year with a broke viscous with no overheating problems apart from once but that was down to the thermostat shutting on the motorway..

The err culprit of it getting hot lol.. Couldn't go back, couldn't go forward, couldn't go sideways haha, 35" simex's and 8274 on the crimbo list

Wow that's unreal running without fans, been to the UK in summer and yes it was a bit cool.
Here it's 28 to 32 average but can hit 35 deg easily, proper cooling and fans a must.

Never had a viscous fitted to mine and never had to use the leccy fan which is manually operated (that is to say with a switch, I don't stand there and spin it round by hand ). Barbados 200tdis have always run very cool so the chances of them ever overheating in normal day to day on road driving here, even in summer, are quite slim

Engine revving up surely means the viscous fan would spin and draw air through no matter what speed of travel. I'd suspect the viscous coupling too as being too loose to spin fast enough. Some folks fit the elec fan to the front of the rad to suppliment the viscous if needed

Viscous wasn't loose. The unit was broken making it just spin very slowly as if the engine is cold.