Yeah, I know it is a perennial problem, but I had my first experience with overheating in traffic yesterday. Never had a problem before, but I was in very slow stop & go for about an hour on my way to cruise night. It was about 80 degrees outside... not really hot, but the traffic was bad enough that the car was stopped most of the time. Maxed out the factory temp gauge. I have a mechanical gauge in the bypass line, which indicated around 210. It normally reads about 20 degrees cooler than the manifold, but of course I wasn't able to get out and check the temp with an IR gauge.

As the engine kept getting hotter, I popped the rear-opening hood to increase the air flow. As temps rose further, I turned on the heater. Finally, I started turning off the engine when the car wasn't moving. In hindsight, turning off the engine was probably a bad idea, huh? It didn't boil-over that I could tell. I knew the engine was hot because it dieseled when I shut it off... it has never done that before. One thing I did NOT do was rev the engine a little, which might have helped move more air and water around... my idle is set pretty low. Once the car was moving steadily again, the temps settled right down into normal range, and everything ran fine. No dieseling when I finally parked.

My engine is a fresh 292 (2Kmi), decked block, 113 heads milled for 9:1 SCR, Mummert 265 cam, Mallory unilite (mechanical only), 12 deg. BTDC @ idle. Runs very strong. I have a 6 bladed fan, "normal" water pump and pulley, and use a recovery tank. The level was low when I got to cruise night. It may have been low to start with, I didn't check. I'm running just distilled water with radiator relief. I know that there are things I can do to increase cooling... I'm considering getting an electric pusher fan. I've heard of installing a modified heavy duty big block fan & thermal clutch. But this experience got me second guessing my actions yesterday...

So, what do you guys do when you get stuck in traffic and the water temp heads skyward? Do you wait for the cloud of steam and then pull over?