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Old 09-08-2009, 01:22 AM   #12 (permalink)
cfg83
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Christ -

Quote:
Originally Posted by Christ View Post
...

A grille block merely allows less direct airflow over the radiator, which affords less cooling capacity (not necessarily a bad thing) to the coolant, so that when it is able to re-enter the engine, it's warmer than it normally would be, takes less time to cycle back to 195dF, which means the engine warms up quicker than normal, with less heating/cooling cycles of the coolant before stabilizing.

...
I thought that another purpose of the grille block was to keep the engine running hotter in general (maybe this is what you wrote). The idea is, we are "narrowing" the operating range temperature of the engine on purpose because hotter means more efficient (to a point). We can get away with this because we are running under reduced load and we are monitoring the engine at a higher degree of attention than regular drivers. Does this make sense?

CarloSW2
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