Water Pump Continued

While I was waiting for the pump to finally show up, I decided to fit my new headlamps, the old ones were incredibly cloudy and caused the "light" to be very poor

Before and after

I flushed out the cooling system a few times until everything ran clear, it took a fair while but that was to be expected having sat for 4 years with no antifreeze in it, I de-scaled the thermostat housing, made a new gasket and fitted a thermostat after I'd drilled the bleed hole in it.

Eventually the water pump arrived, as you'd expect it took mere moments to fit, popped the rad hoses back on, filled with coolant, burped the rad etc, I had a little time left so I managed to tweak the carb a bit and sort out the Idle speed/mixture. 

On the way to a local hot rod meet it puked coolant, self levelling I can only assume, but it appeared to be running a lot hotter than it had before I did the work. A little way further down the road it was high up on the gauge so I pulled over to let it cool, I did notice that wherever I placed my hands it wasn't really that hot. I refilled the rad with the coolant that had gotten spat out earlier just in case it wasn't levelling and it was an air lock, but soon after I set of it puked again. I just carried on up the road to the meet.

I had a nice conversation with one of the guys there about the troublesome journey and was beckoned to sit down with my friends have a nice coffee, burger and fries, followed by a coke to wash it down. We stepped outside and more conversations ensue about how none of it really made any sense other than the mild restriction of the newly fitted stat could be hindering the cooling and the little rad couldn't keep up. I set off and got home just fine, it was still showing a bit warmer than I'd have liked, but didn't smell bad and was running well, so I continued home. Once back at base I grabbed my laser thermometer and found the highest reading was just 85 Celsius, not too hot at all, I can only assume that the gauge is lying, that the sender and gauge aren't matched and the car has been running very cold since I've had it. 

This morning I decided to take a look at the remaining cooling components, first I found that the fan was attempting to work against the air flow, so would have been doing nothing but slowing the incoming air, so I reversed the polarity of the fan and made if flow the right way. One of the chaps at the meet suggested that I move the license plate to beneath the grille as opposed to behind it, which made perfect sense an couldn't hurt, so that has been done too.

With any luck this should be the end of the cooling issues, but we'll see there was a considerable amount of emulsification found under the oil cap when I changed the oil yesterday, this could be from it standing for so long, or could well be a lot more sinister. I can only hope that it's due to standing, otherwise it'll be time to source a new, bigger 4.6 litre engine.