The old girl seems to be mellowing out some on her own. She still sits at the high end of the temp gage after idling for about 10 minutes or so but it seems to take longer to get there & I can drop the temp some by increasing the RPMs.
To JoeH & DennisM - yup, brand new rebuild.
I think maybe either the gage or the sending unit is somewhat off? The sending unit is new but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's working the way it should. I had somebody suggest that maybe the sending unit is screwed too far into the water channel on the manifold & because the sensor tip is too close to the metal it's picking up a higher temp than it should? Does that make any sense?
While I was out there goofing around holding a wrench & trying to look like a mechanic, I got to looking at my heater hoses. The more I looked at them, the more I started thinking that I may have hooked them up backwards. I can't find anything in the shop manual that identifies which hose goes where, so I'm gonna try for some adult supervision here in the forum!
Standing in front of the truck looking aft towards the firewall, here's the set up now:
The hose from the left outlet comes from the firewall, passes thru the heater valve and goes to the fitting on the manifold.
The hose on the right goes to the fitting on the water pump.
L R
(hose to manifold) (hose to pump)
Is this correct? If not, I have to change it but also would it have any bearing on the higher than normal water temp at idle?
