Hey guys,
From a warm and dry afternoon to a cold, wet and windy evening... temp during this afternoon was in the high 20s C and this evening it was a rainy and windy 12C by shutdown... Why the weather report? .... Well, the radiator switch heatsink seems to be doing its job over the mid lower end of the temperature scale... the cooling system has "self adjusted" itself and kept the head temp at around the 90 to 93 C mark without intervention from me at all, and this is with a air temperature swing of around 18C or so. It looks promising so far, but a bit more testing will still need to be done to confirm that it is working to my satisfaction... Don't copy it just yet, let me screw it up first and save you the trouble!
Loads varied from light to maximum design load over the time period tested so far, including overload conditions of 20A plus, at 230V... At no stage did the cooling system boil... it came very close, but just before boiling point was reached(around 97C), the fan started up and held the heat demons at bay...
As a safeguard, I am prepping some concentrated glycol to replace the coolant in the cooling system with... Although the heat transfer properties of the concentrate will be lower, causing a slightly higher head temperature, the benefits I feel, will outweigh this. The primary benefit will be a much elevated boiling point, in the region of 110C to allow for more leeway before coolant gets dumped from the overflow port on the header tank by steam/vapour expulsion..... My header tank and radiator top tank are not large enough to cater for more than a litre or so loss before the heat syphon loop gets broken... Bad things will happen if it does... But hey, if I get it ticking over OK, if the header tank was good enough for a 1600VW, I am sure my roid won't complain!
Enough rambling... Darkest Africa is again dark.... now that Optimus Prime Mover has gone to sleep....
Keep it spinning!
Regds
Ed
PS... contrary to popular belief, I don't have lions roaming the back yard... bushbuck, duiker, waterbuck, porcupines, bushpig and warthog... but no lions.... Damn, I miss them...