Engine Cooling Water Tank Sizing

[donpearsall]

Caveman, the tank is shaped kind of like an inverted foot and fits over and in front of the rear tire. A lot of credit goes to Fred Vance as he gave me the idea for mine. I think he runs about the same setup and had no overheating either. Besides, it adds about 90 pounds of tire ballast which does not hurt either.
Don

[fastman614]

I read with interest this whole thread.... we have been using thermostats in our various systems over the years.... this allows the engine to be brought up to operating temperature while not to any extent raising the temperature in the resevoir..... we also have a screw on cap that covers a 4.5 inch diameter filler spout into which we add several bags of ice..... effectively increasing the temperature differental by A LOT.... At Speedweek, during summer heat, we found that 80 lbs of ice would leave the water in the reservoir at about 140F after a 5 mile run.... the thermostat was actually still cycling!.... that was with a 670 HP small block Chevy.... we never got our new engine combo shaken down at Speedweek 2010 though.... but at the World Finals, when it was much cooler, we were using about 50 lbs of ice with treservoir temperatures in the 150F range.... the humorous part of this is that it costs us more for ice every run than it costs us for fuel! 

[John Burk]

Fastman
How many gallons is your water tank and what class is your engine .
John

[fastman614]

Fastman
How many gallons is your water tank and what class is your engine .
John

John,
The car is a C/GL 355 to 370 cu. in. Chevy or Dodge.... The tank is about 32 US Gallons we run with a bit of air space too.... I went looking on this computer to see if I had any pics but I don't and, since I am 3000 miles from home, I can't take any pics... The tank is 16"Long X 18"Wide X 24" Tall... we had a hose barb on the bottom that connected to the water pump intake..... on the top of the tank, we had a plenum made of 2" square aluminum billet about 6" long into which 4 lines from the four corners of the heads flowed. There was a 1/8" NPT hole on one end of the plenum for a temperature probe and on the opposite end, a 5th port that had a bypass line going down to the bottom of the tank. The features of this plenum block are that it was bored to 1.50" diameter and at one end bored 90 degrees to the main hole is the return to tank porting with a 4 hole mounting flange and a shallow counterbore to locate a stock thermostat.. We added a 1/2" thick flange to the tank with a threaded 4 hole flange pattern to which the plenum gets bolted. It works really well unless you put the thermostat in backwards (ask me how I know that one  ...)

If you want a sketch, P/M me with your email address and I will whip something up and send it to you.

[fastman614]

By the way, we don't run the setup this way on the Dodge engine.... we made things way more complicated by adding a heat exchanger into which the engine coolant is close looped.... we have an electric thermostatically controlled motor/transfer pump that pumps the iced cooling water from the tank to the heat exchanger .... we were of the mindset that controlling the engine temperaturewithin +/- 3degrees is better....because that's what they do in NASCAR....  and to further complicate things, we added a 3rd transfer pump, a small ball valve and a check valve so that, after the engine is shut off, we can leave the electric pumps moving water through the engine and the heat exchanger to keep the cylinder head temperatures from spiking too high....

We also run a similar system on our Vega with a 432 cu. in Big Chief Chevy....but without the after run transfer pump the water tank on the Vega is mounted flatter and is baffled.... it holds 30 Gal of water/ice....and works quite well too.