cooling a 66 coupe

[wrench74fun]

i have a 1966 coupe with a new stock 302 and a c4 auto. it has a new 3 row radiator with a steel fan and the large fan shroud. i live in the desert and the cooling is marginal. i want to install air conditioning without having any cooling issues, does anyone know what needs to be done to achive this. i have talked to a builder and they recomend a tripple pass radiator. has anyone out there ran one of these and would it be more effecient to run an electric fan. any information would be greatly appriciated

[adamrc29]

it should run descently cool with the radiator thats in it I use to fight cooling problems badly with 289-351 W's I came to the conclusion that if a car over heats while driving down the road there is something wrong with it, it should run at its thermastat level no matter what , I currently have ac on my 65 289 3spd bone stock well broke in , my car it runs out cool going down the road but if I get stuck in traffic it does have get up to about 200 or so, and will cool back down if you cut the air off it seem to help when I finally changed it to a 4 barrel carb the motor breaths better now , you need to find out what heads you have, if you have the little valved heads heat could be an issue , I also ran true duel exhaust from the motor out , and started running synthetic oil , mine can sit in traffic for about 5 minutes before it begans to heat up I'm running a 160 thermastat ,I'm in s.c our heat index has been around 115 here lately its been holding up well , my advice I would try it now before I changed anything else , if you have heating problems I would resort to a bigger radiator or get one those aluminum radiator they do pretty good too if you only have the C-H dash gauges just remember the 195 is in the middle and 210 is about 3 quaters of the way to H , let us know what your out come is .

[wrench74fun]

first off thanks for the reply, i had just about given up on this board. i do have the 2 barrel heads on my engine although iam running a edelbrock 1406 4 bbl. and a performer rpm manifold. i will in the future be changing the heads and cam. i did not realize that 195 was in the center of the gauge, that is where i am running in traffic. i have pretty well made my mind up to buy the aluminium radiator anyway. it will be another month before i buy it but i will post the results...........again thank you