Thread: How do.. "New" 1939 Ford Steel Tudor Owner

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spent the weekend fixing an overheating issue,

talked to the builder and apparently the car has been overheating for 4 years, he added a second temp gauge, hard wired the electric fan to a switch but the fan still didn't always work, and then wired in a second fan also to a switch, probably spent $400 in parts and labor and was still experiencing the over heat issues.

I spend the better part of Friday and Saturday tracking it down.. sad to say it was a $0.25 cent fix..

even though he had the main fan hard wired, it wasn't coming on, sometimes it would other times it would not, he said the fan was bad and too hard to replace without removing the front of the car and the radiator, so he just put a second fan on the front of the radiator.

turns out to be a $0.25 crimped connector on the thermo-probe attached to the water pump. the connector apparently wasn't crimped correctly so at some point it fell off, and the ground wire to the probe was bouncing against the connector on the probe, so sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't.. Problem was the probe is mounted under the alternator so you can't see it unless you pull the alternator out.

this grounding issue apparently shorted the thermo-relay as once I re-crimped and connected the probe the relay started to buzz.. 30 amp china made POS relay from "rodtronics" that he paid $85 for.

I took a trip to Napa, got a 70amp fan relay for $25. removed all the switches, properly wired the relay and verified all the grounds.. fixed the probe connector, reinstalled the alternator, fired her up low and behold she idled in my driveway AC on full in 103° outside temp for 30 minutes and never got above 190° Fan came on and off as needed to keep the motor below 190°. Car has a 170° t-stat, so I took it for a drive, highway speeds and it dropped to 175° and held that temp at speed, stop and go traffic never above 190° put 125 miles on it in 100°+ outside temp with AC running the whole time and it never got over 190°. prior it was getting to 230° while at speed and 250° while at idle with the small fan running full time.. Small fan not even in use now.


next weekend I tackle the headlights and tail lights. the lights are there, but nothing is functioning, doesn't appear to be a fuse, so I am suspecting it is a grounding issue as well.. in looking over the hack job on the electrical wiring I am preparing to replace the fuse block that is in the vehicle with a painless or a coach control module. I am leaning toward the coach control because it will modernize the vehicle electronics, auto lights, auto up/down on the windows, built-in electronics for remote entry and door poppers instead of stand alone units, built in fan/temp controls, etc. all electronic configuration on a canbus board like a modern car, which eliminates most of these types of issues and the problem of having to trace everything down to a dozen stand alone type modules.