Overheating?

[snakesaway]

Hi all,

As some you may know i finally bought my first cobra a month or so ago. Unfortunately after a few short drives on warm days I found the car was overheating. I knew there was an ebay water and 16 inch thermo fan in the car. This didn't fill me with confidence thats for sure.

First on the agenda was get the radiator looked at sure enough if was about 80% blocked. While I was at it one of the boys from the club suggested I fit a Davies Craig 16" thermo fan and put in an Edlebrock flow water pump. The guy from the radiator shop suggested a high flow thermostat as well. So the cooling system is now sorted.

There is a suggestion that a head gasket maybe on backwards checked that and found that the tag that should be at the front of the block on the passenger side is actually at the back . I was going to pull the heads and check but basically didn't have the balls. I also spoke to a few mechanics and all agreed that if the head gasket was backwards I wouldn't have go it home from Bendigo were I bought it. Also it would over heat very quickly if the gasket was backwards.

So with all of this done yesterday was D day. I fired it up (massive grin), as usual. I ran it at idle in the shed for about 1/2 hour letting all the air out of the cooling system cap on off we go. First test drive seemed to perform perfectly although not a very hot day in Melbourne yesturday.

Next sumoned up the courage to take it for a big drive basically into the city and down Beach Rd. All was perfect until on the home run, I hit a few traffic lights in a row and the dreaded South Rd train line. 2 trains later as the temp gauge started 2 nudge 210 F my heart rate was starting to increase not in a good way. Once we got going again the gauge quickly returned to were it had been the whole trip nailed to zero on 180 F.

I guess after all this I am just after thoughts as to whether I am just being paranoid about the gauge getting to 210 or do I still have a problem e.g dread head gasket or something else.

Any thoughts

Andrew