The heat is on

Returning to the overheating problem.
A good friend of mine, Mike Charlton, loaned me temperature gun that looks rather like a phazer ffrom the original Star Trek.

Well, armed with Mike Charlton's phazer I went out this afternoon to check what the temperature actually was  when the electric fan came on and then what it was in comparison to what the car's temp gauge said.

Running the car up to temperaure at tick over plus a few revs (strategically placed calibrated brick on accelerator pedal) the electric fan cut in way too soon, even the temp gauge had only just crept up above cold!

So I adjusted that and then with Mike's phazer I was monitoring the temp at the waterpump, thermostat housing approaching 70 degrees or so when the fan came on again so I adjusted it up again.

A little while later the temperature gauge was in the middle, using Mike's phazer temps were now around 85 to 90 and a couple of minutes after that the fan cut in at 2/3 of the temp gauge.

When it cut out the temp gauge was back down just under 1/2 way, in fact where you would want it to be

I am taking it that the thermostat opened, the fan controller cut the fan in at around 100 -110 and it cut off again at around 85-90. The car happily ran at 1100rpm from then on at normal temp on the temp gauge.

I don't know why all this should have happened really other than it's blooming cold out there under the carport right now but until today it would have run at 3/4 temp with the fan on all the time I haven't actually changed anything that I can see that would now mean it runs at a normal temperature but the loan of MIke's temp gun does mean I can rule out a dodgy temp gauge as this seems to be accurate.

Here's a pic of the temp at the waterpump/thermostat housing a couple of minutes after I had switched the engine off.

Next I'll work on the poor running after tips from Mr Shedtune but that can be another week as it's too cold for me out there