1992 RS Camaro. First car for Der Burger.

We got started on the R&R of the cooling system on this thing yesterday.
First I poured in a bottle of cooling system flush and fired it up and let it run for the 20 minutes the bottle says too.


After that I wanted to test out my swap meet Snap On pressure tester and it held pretty well.
I suspect it may have needed a better seal at the connection though...


Here we are putting water into the upper hose to reverse flush it...


And then we used the lower radiator hose to flush it out the other way...


Then we went as far as to run it through the heater hose as well to make sure that is as clean as it gets.
After that, it was dark fast because we started late.

Next though, we are going to reconnect the hoses to old radiator and fill the thing with water.
This little tester is super simple as it just has an adapter that a plastic piece force fits into.
In the bottom of the S, there is a fluid that you fill it with that is blue.
While running, the whole thing sits in the filler neck of the radiator and while the car is running air bubbles through it.
If the fluid changes from blue to green or yellow, there are combustion gasses in the coolant.
Now you need a fresh set of head gaskets and a possible trip to the machine shop.

If the fluid stays blue, you are good to go.

We shall see another day what the test shows us as work is busy and I have low want to perform currently.
So I am dragging my feet all day, that just means I work longer each day to make up for the slackerism I have.

Also, that cement mixing pan is awesome for catching the fluid from this job.
Much easier than trying to aim it into a bucket.

All of this stuff is waiting to go in as well.
I got a new water pump for the because of it and they are cheap insurance.
This one is from Dayco and it came prepainted.


A fresh thermostat.
I went with the high flow version with the bubbler to let all the air pass as the car runs.


Here is a fresh fan switch as the one in the car does not work for some reason.
We just turn the missing AC on and the ECM turns the fan on.


And for later checks, some dye.

Well then.
I put the old radiator back in and hooked the whole thing back up.
Filled the system and turned it on to warm up.

Got's me out the RELD kit to perform the test.


Simple instructions.

Put fluid in to create a liquid trap any gasses have to go through to escape the system.
The fluid detects CO2, so I tested it by putting the fluid in the tester and blowing through it.
Immediately turned vitamin pee yellow.

Here is how it did on the Camaro...

We did the test twice as the car is up on stands in the front and the exhaust is short as it is still being worked on.
Max gave it some gas and the fluid got up to the high side of the tester.
When the car was shut off, he noticed the fluid had changed, I told him my theory and just to make sure we did it all again.

The second time in the video, the fluid stayed blue the entire time it was on the car so no head gaskets leaking into the cooling system!

Now to dig in.
First off was the thermostat.
Its bolts seemed to be held in with putty as they did not want to turn on the way out for anything.
You can also see the "Newer" water pump that is already on there.
I wanted to have piece of mind on this car and they are not that expensive, so we are going to change it.


With the pump off I wanted to clean up the timing tab and the timing mark.
The PO had some messy orange lines on either side of the groove, it came right off with some carb cleaner.
I went inside and got my Dollar store white nail polish that I use for my RC trucks wheel bolt thread locker.
It went in and made it quite easy to see.


New high flow stat going in to its new home...


The belt was in great shape, I am pretty sure it was changed along with the water pump.
So it is going back on the engine.


And here we have the new pump installed all proper like.
This was the fastest water pump I have ever changed.
Remove the radiator, fan, belt, and then the pump.
No need to pull any of the accessory drive as all bolts are easy to get too coming out and going in.


Sometime this week I will get out there and put the new radiator in for the final time.
Then the new fan switch will go in and hopefully the car will behave and drive cool.

While we were waiting for the car to warm up for the RELD test, it felt like the time to fiddle with the new tools.
So we got out the Anemometer to measure the wind speed of the stock cooling fan for the baseline before any upgrades are made.


1,142 feet per minute.
Mmkay.
So some Gooblyationing and I found a calculator to change my ft/min, but it wanted to know the area of the fan pushing the ft/min.
So I found another calculator as I was being lazy and knew the interwebs would tell me faster than if I were to figure the equation out myself.
That is what this one does for me...


Now that I have the area of the 16 inch fan pulling the air across my radiator, I can use the other one to covert that to CFM.
So with my 1,142 and 16 inch fan area of 1.3963 I can see that the stock fan pulls 1594 CFM for the cooling system.


Nifty.
Also, if you are smerter than I, please let me know if I did anything incorrectly and I will try to fix it.

I also tested the amps it pulls on startup as well as running.
Upon start it pulls just over 20 amps and then settles into pulling 11 amps while running.
Soon I will also test the RPM that the fan spins as I have a tester for that now as well.

All of these little bits of information will help me to assess whether or not the brushless fan upgrade is actually an upgrade.
Duh, it is.
But these things will let me know just how much better off we are with them instead of the old trusty brushed options.

Junkyard is next weekend for 75% off and that is when I plan on harvesting several fan controllers from various vehicles to see what it is that works best for me.
After that I will have to figure out mounting of the new fans and go from there.

@Catbox noticed your running the a/c pump bypass. I have a very similar engine without the pump or bypass pulley. I was able to get a shorter belt to fit perfectly. If interested I'll get a belt number fir you so you can eliminate a pulley.

squaredeal91 said:

@Catbox noticed your running the a/c pump bypass. I have a very similar engine without the pump or bypass pulley. I was able to get a shorter belt to fit perfectly. If interested I'll get a belt number fir you so you can eliminate a pulley.

Click to expand...

She wants to add the AC back to the car eventually.
One of these days we will however be removing the smog pump as it is not even hooked up to anything.
Just spinning in the engine bay for nuthin...