That water pump only effects the heater. I know a number of them where the pump has been removed because it was leaking and a very efficient heater was not needed.
I would keep my OEM radiator, I have had it repaired once already they used a hi tech glue there reason the proximity of the leak is where two different metals merge it could not take a weld, I would never try and diagnose on the internet I just ask for my own education I always go by my mechanic, I think he is the best in South Florida if I was in Texas it would be Brian we ar lucky that he puts up with us here. D.
Thanks everyone for all the comments. My main point in the post was to get a sense how far outside the norm my temperatures were, and the discussion has been very helpful in that regard. Even better to have some troubleshooting ideas I can play with. Thanks.
Update: had a few small cracks in the radiator. We were able to get them soldered up and she's running better now.
Since we are discussing temperatures and radiators, I have an associated question regarding the cooling fans on my 1999 456M. Last week the larger of the 2 fans stopped working. Since that time the smaller fan is running continuously, from key turn on. Is there a fail-safe program in the fan control circuitry that when one fan fails the other runs continuously? Comments are welcomed. Thanks Dennis
So we replaced hoses (including the main one that runs through the engine) and sealed up a few small leaks in the radiator. I'm no longer losing drops of coolant, so that's good. But I'm still seeing coolant temps in the 210-215 range in slow traffic, confirmed with an IR thermometer. So I got to thinking -- why am I so worried about this? It's staying well out of the red and running fine. My owner's manual seems to indicate that the second radiator fan comes on at 212, and that's functioning normally. If Ferrari set up the second fan to come on at 212, doesn't that imply that the engineers wanted to keep it at or below 212? So am I just fine? Where's the flaw in my reasoning?
Mark- No, that is not how it should work. There are two temperature sensors and the fans should turn on well below 210. One is a primary that turns on to stabilize water temperature at around 190 F and the other is a back-up in case the first one fails. That back-up starts the fans at around 200-210 F.
Here's the page from my manual. Doesn't this say that one fan comes on at 198 and the second at 212? I'm not sure how else to read that.
Right, so the fans are coming on properly. Now that we've addressed the leaks and upgraded the last of the hoses, I guess my though is this: if Ferrari wants fan #2 to come on at 212, and if that acts to keep the car at or below 212, maybe I'm just fine and should quit worrying about it being in the upper half of the normal (non-red) range.
Update: After soldering things up, my temps did improve...but then the old radiator sprung new leaks and the temp went back to where they had been. Even in cold winter weather here in Minnesota, it was wanting to run around 210 if running while sitting still. Finally bit the bullet and had Ron Davis build me a new radiator. Beautiful piece. 2NA can comment on what a complete bear it was to install, as it is almost an inch thicker than the OEM unit. But now the temps are running where they should (albeit in winter weather). The acid test will be warm weather, but I think we may have rooted out the problem.
I have had three (3) 456 cars, and all three eventually developed cooling problems. In my current 456, I recently saw sustained 237 degree temps, and had the cooling system serviced. Thermostat was bad, and was replaced with the US made state equivalent, for $12 instead of the Ferrari $250. Still hot. Had radiator removed and cleaned. It had been BADLY clogged. Also had a spare on hand, and also had that other unit serviced. The second unit showed better flow, and so went with that unit. MUCH cheaper than either a custom replacement or the genuine Ferrari "unobtanium" unit. I suppose in a pinch, I could have "made it home" by removing the pressure radiator cap, and running a total-loss evaporation unit, while refilling occasionally............ What the heck, just fix it right, and go on the the NEXT problem......
After much "toing and froing" with bleeding , purging, changing hoses and bleeding and checking for blown head gasket and no success I broke down and put in a Ron Davis radiator...1000 + miles later it sits at 190 +/- one needle width all day long, stop and go. highish speed ( we are in the NE.0...fan kicks in at 190 and goes right out...second fan has not kicked in yet and we have had several 90+ day. hope this helps...Marc
The second fan is a backup for if the first one does not come on, or if the first one cannot get the temp down on its own, for example because of an ineffective radiator. The running into 212 in itself is not too bad if it happens a few times. However, it is bad for the electrics (many amps going through fusebox etc for powering two fans instead of one) and the temp fluctuations put more thermal stress on the engine. While that sounds abstract to most, it boils down to increasing your chance on popping a hose, head gasket failure or even cracked heads.
It is hard to believe as Italy has 40 deg C / 104 deg F too, but it seems like all 456 and 550s have overheating problems. My 550 included, which has new waterpump, new thermostat, new bled coolant, both sensors replaced with new, still overheats. After a service at Ferrari official workshop, Motor Service in Modena, with new belts and coolant, it overheats even more.... I said I wanted to testdrive the car before paying for the service. I returned from the test drive with a temp gauge reading of 115 deg. According to the manager, this was normal. But I said "just wait", and the temp went up up up to almost 125 deg. That is a hair from the red sone. And what actually happens when turning the engine off, it actually rises even more due to no circulation...... Dangerous! They said the only solution was to replace the shroud and fans to 575, another 2.000 Euro upgrade. So I will be doing that. The only thing to keep the heat down is to turn on the HEATER inside the car to max level. Okay the temp outside i 35-40 deg C (around a hundred F), and the engine is 120 deg C, put the fan on 4 and what temp is inside the car........ This is hilarious!! End of discussion: cooling system way under dimentioned. In my Maranello (soon worth the same as two new Corvettes), I will be sitting ice cold, shivering, inside the car even if it is 40 deg outside, black tarmac, no wind, at stand still. That is my goal. Have a good summer.
For what it's worth, my car has been running fine ever since the new radiator. It still gets warm sitting in traffic on hot days with the A/C running, but not near the red zone. And if I turn off the A/C it's fine.
I am having a hard time with the physics as described here. The flow from the water pump is to the top of the radiator and the bottom of the radiator goes back to the suction side of the water pump. There is a clear diagram of this on page B83 of the 456 WSM. Page B79 notes that the fan start switch is at the bottom of the radiator and trips at 197 +/- 35F as noted on page B80. The temperature sender for the gauge is at the coolant header for the head in the valley between the heads, under the intake manifold (I take this to be 8 in the diagram of page B 79, but I could be wrong as it could come from the other head). The high temp switch is located in the manifold that connects the two coolant headers together from the heads and forms the outlet for the tube that goes to the back of the water pump to the thermostat, to be either recirculated back to the engine or sent directly to the radiator, This should be the hottest coolant (in aggregate of course, that in the heads would locally be hotter...). By this then, if you are sitting at a standstill, the gauge should creep up until the right hand fan kicks on at somewhere between 162F and 232F, at the bottom of the radiator which at idle my be 10, maybe 15F lower than the gauge would indicate at this low coolant flow condition. Not sure why we should expect the gauge to remain at 190F the entire time. Now, if the fan can not turn it around to the 188 +/- 35F reset without the air off, then I should think there is a problem. Also, the secondary fan in no way is an emergency fan as it is not detailed as such in the WSM (see page B 80), coming on at 212F +/- 35. For my car, the right hand fan seems to come on at 210F (measured by a laser thermometer [notably a little off when used on aluminum] at the header under the intake) and the left hand comes on shortly thereafter. This is on a 90F day ambient with the air on full cold and the fan at 4. Both fans will pull the temp down and cycle, and in my view that's what you want. Also note I have a Ron Davis radiator and yes, it will never approach the factory unit for heat exchanger effectiveness; the air side fins on the factory one are really fine, say 32 fins per inch. No one uses that fine a pitch, because they clog. This was the issue with mine, before it sprung a leak. The Ron Davis one is roughly 24, so you lose a bit of cooling capacity in the bargain. If I had to do it again, I would have sent him the whole assembly and had him cut back the oil cooler - the damn thing over cools the oil for 99% of the time and with three gallons of the stuff, unless you're doing the Texas mile, I'm not sure what you need that for...
Dean- Your oil cooler should have a thermostat, too. The 575M had several fixes that seem to have licked the overheating problem. Among those are a tighter fitting shroud, different size pulley on the water pump, and a slightly different water pump and impeller. Even in 95+ degree heat at 5500', mine keeps her at 190 when stopped at extended stop lights. Different fans may help, too, but undetermined at this time.
A couple of weekends ago I was driving home in slow freeway traffic in 92 deg. F weather. The temperature gauge was at 3/4 scale (about 225 deg. F), seemed too high for me. Fans were on. When I was working on an oil leak through the cam sprockets a while ago, I noticed a gap of about 1/4" (5-6 mm) between the fan shroud and the radiator. The diagram in ricambiamerica shows short strips of sealing material between the shroud and radiator - hmm... My sealing strips were missing. So I went down to Loews and got some sticky backed weather stripping. I loosened the fan shroud and stuffed in the stripping around the edges. Tightened the bolts, which put a squeeze on the weather stripping, making a good seal. Now the temperature barely goes above 190 deg. F when sitting with the fans on. That small gap around the shroud will let air go around the radiator rather than through it.
The same workshop services my car every year. My 550 has a 30% coolant mixture and I ask them to clean the radiator with steam from time to time (using the "vaporella"). This helps a lot. The temperature still rises to about 100C in the conditions you're describing, but this is acceptable. I also think the 575's fans shroud is the best way to go, but why 2000 Euros?? It costs 290 Euros plus tax, and the workshop only charges 60/hour plus tax for labor. Stefano
The oil cooler does have a thermostat, but it not a very good one. There is a small bypass that allows a bit of flow and that, coupled with some leakage around the annulus of the shuttle valve and the huge size of the cooler, means the oil temp never gets to above 212F, where it needs to be to boil the moisture out of the oil. I have tried various methods to get the oil temp up from blocking some of the airflow to the oil cooler to bypassing the oil flow to the cooler altogether and was never happy with the system. I will say this though, even bypassed altogether, the car ran no hotter in day to day driving in two seasons of summers... Ferrari did it right in that they have a really nice little sheet metal header that spaces the fans away from the radiator itself, with rubber flaps designed to open when at speed, and closed when stopped with the fans running. Then you ruin it by staggering the fan starts. When the right one (the bigger one) runs, it pulls a fair bit of underhood air (that air is really hot - pop the hood on a hot day after a good run and try, just try to hold your hand on the battery. Good luck...) in into the mix. It is surprising the larger fan can even cope with the cooling load it does. I get the feeling the smaller fan is there more to prevent this re-circulation that to do any meaningful flow work (I am being a little over the top here). When I modded my system to limit the current in the fuse panel I had the relays set so both came on together and the system worked much better - it cycled a bit more in terms of on and off for the fans, but it kept the coolant temps in aggregate lower as it didn't get to the left hand fan trip point with the air on. There is a lot of traffic on this site about solving coolant temp issues and I agree, if the fans can't regulate the coolant temps below the trip on-trip off points on a hot day, stopped, with the air on you have work to do. In my view, I would start with the radiator. With the fin pitch that high, remove it and have the air side cleaned. then look at the fan connectors. The fuse panel is basically a circuit board that all this current runs through. On a hot day, after running the car around town where the fans are running, hold your hand on the passenger side foot well - hot isn't it? The hotter it gets, the more resistance in the path for the current flow to the fans. The fans need power, so at a lower voltage they want more current, which creates a situation that is approaching thermal runaway. Get under your car and look at the connectors, most I have seen with any appreciable miles on them they have heat damage. The side with the female connectors will melt into the plastic as the connection degrades over time, exacerbated by the higher currents described above, which makes the connection worse, and so on. A new connector would be a next step. Keep in mind that water gets into the back of these, corroding the wore, so your tech (or you) needs to make sure the stripped wire is squeaky clean before the crimp, or you will be in no better shape, post service. These points are obviously after all the simple ones have been wrung out, like - did you just service the coolant? Then you likely have an air pocket somewhere....
Hi Stefano. Thanks for your reply!! Here is a picture of my temp gauge, which the chief of the place one minute before had said "temperatore is normal". I was SO MAD a left the car there and walked back to my BMW M3. The 550 is still there. By the way, the M3 have no problems at all, even when towing my race boat (it has one mechanical fan on the engine side and one big electric fan on the front side of the radiator). I LOVE my 550 ALOT, and I not only was dissappointed about the whole situation, but I am really sad that when telling about the overheating problems, and asking them to take the radiator out and thoroughly clean in inside/ouside, and they had only pressure cleaned it while within the car, and the problem was even worse than before I delivered them the car (for timing belt replacement), myself too came to "the boiling point"!! (I am happy I can no Italian bad words)...... About the cost, as I had cooled down, I went back in a more correct manner and discussed what would be possible to do. They only suggested a modification with new 575 shrould, new 575 fans, smaller pulley on the water pump, smaller auxillary belt to run the pump (because the diameter is smaller) and nothing more. This with labor and tax was 1.970 euro. Not my first wish after having a big service carried out. I was so depressed that I left the car there and went home to Norway/Sweden by plane (I keep the M3 in Nice, France) and bought a Maserati 4200 Coupe GT instead which has had no overheating problems at all. Not that we have had any warm weathere here this "summer" for that matter but I want to have the 550 and M3 in France/Italy/Switzerland where they can do a fine job, and I can drive a Maserati back home. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I might test Dave's modification out... Seems like a logic thing and he never has any overheating problems anymore. I am afraid putting on stronger 575 electric fans as the 550 wiring already is (according to this forum) inadequate and eventually can catch fire one day. Like one mention overe here, the speed of the fans are of course a result of the voltage and good/bad connections and the relays. A big wire directly from the battery via a big relay actuated by the car's existing relays might cause the fans to run faster.. Anyone tried this test? I like to hear the fans even if they are noisy. That ensures you know thst they do work! Here a picture of the bimmer which really pulls my boat. No overheating issues at all. The needle is on the higher side when towing op mountains though, but not overheating.... German precition usually works! So for this matter, I enjoy the BMW more than the Ferrari because on hot days I put the HEAT on instead of AC. I say no more..... Image Unavailable, Please Login
