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have a vet's club in chgo land area......couple of our 230 cid have had over heating problems.......have three engines going through rebuild.....complete clean out....To keep temp's down we are looking into a oil cooler.....My question is has anyone put one on the 230 cid and how well did it work........

This was most likely a failure of the water distribution pipe.

I would have to agree that the water distribution tube should be addressed first, along with the radiator.
Make sure to have the water tube removed from the block prior to having it boiled out.

Bert

My 53 runs "warm" all the time. Always wanted to change out the water distribution tube but have been concerned with the removal. No problem with removing radiator and front of engine components but still concerned about pulling out a 61 year old rusted tube intact. Don't want to start this and wind up doing a total engine rebuild. Any thoughts!

bill monahan wrote:My 53 runs "warm" all the time. Always wanted to change out the water distribution tube but have been concerned with the removal. No problem with removing radiator and front of engine components but still concerned about pulling out a 61 year old rusted tube intact. Don't want to start this and wind up doing a total engine rebuild. Any thoughts!

Just do it.

Seriously, if the water distribution tube is in pieces, rusted away, or collapsed, it's already a problem, and it may cause more headaches and expense if you don't extract it and replace it with a new, functional one. That tube is in there for a very good reason, and Dodge didn't go to the expense of manufacturing and installing it without cause. If it's not working correctly, something else in your engine will be affected, starting with the exhaust valves, seats, and guides, and you'll end up paying more to fix that, too. Extracting a broken water tube won't be cause for a total engine rebuild, but not extracting one could eventually force you to do that expensive rebuild.

If you're hesitating because you've never pulled one before, just tear into it. It likely won't be as bad as you imagine it will be, and if you run into problems, at least one person here will have already had the same issue, and solved it.

This tech tip is worth reading: http://p15-d24.com/page/p15d24/tech/tec ... html#water

Going back to Bocat's original question about an oil cooler - the engines he's talking about didn't overheat in terms of water temperature. In fact they have good distribution tubes (they ARE easy to replace) and never saw high temp on gauges. The 'overheating' was oil related. Oil pressure remained consistent, but the lower half of the engine (and oil) was seriously hot. Concern here is if the oil overheats, and breaks down, we could damage critical components without realizing it.

So... the thought was to install an oil temp gauge and possibly an oil cooler.

Just wondering if anyone's done this and if so, any thoughts on sizing, etc.

Joe W.

The US Army had over 100,000 of these trucks and drove them for hundreds of thousands if not millions of miles and never saw the need to install an oil cooler even in the desert conditions some of the fleet operated in, if an oil cooler is needed to keep temps. down something is going on with that engine that is not normal.

I have noticed that the oil in the pan of my 251 is way hotter than that of any datsun motor when doing a hot oil change. I have not compared the temp with a laser but I have fished drain plugs out of the pan with a bare hand on both

been toying with a turbo setup and wanted to add a full flow setup to a bypass block, add a oil dump, cooler.......

I had a hand at mapping out the block no one said I was way off or made corrections so its probably something like