Cummins Big Cam 4 motors, prone to overheat?

The one biggest issue with why engines overheat is due to a lack of maintenece of the radiator. Keep it clean and you will do a lot better than most. Make sure thatyou do not have a dirt build up between the cooling fins. Had a truck with 300,000 miles come in complaining of constant overheating, ran a series of test just to conclude that the owner was not cleaning the radiator.

 

190-210 won't hurt that engine.

 

no mechanical motor should shut down. if the driver is stupid enough to run it till the pistond melt then it will run till the pistons melt. Good gauges are critical in a mechanical and you must know how to read them.
the cummins will run most efficently about 190 degrees. the cummins also wants to run 1600 to 1800 rpm. that's its sweetest cruise range. never run a big cam under 1400rpm for any amount of time. Hit the bottom of the hills about 2k or 2100rpm and let it come down to 1500, otherwise it will fall on it's face

 

buy spare head bolts. they break them constantly. I've been down for the last 6 days because of a broken one. I didn't have any spares and then they sent me the wrong one. WIll be wednesday before I get one and that will be over a week i've been home.

Cummins constantly purges info on these old motors from there system and it's gotten to where you can't trust the information. Every part needs to be physically compared before you buy it, don't order any part before you have the old one out to compare.

If you lug the motor down it will break head bolts more often.

 

Another tip on the overheating.When washing your truck or having the Streakin Beacon or someone do it watch using that high pressure washer on the grill/ radiator as it can bend those fins and stop air from flowing thru and cooling.Then you have to get a radiator comb to try to straighten them out.PITA. Just something to think about =]

 

My first truck had a Big Cam IV and it would heat up as well, radiator was replaced with new T-stats, this engine ran a thermostatic fan clutch which was also replaced, I finally got rid of that and replace it with a air actuated clutch fan. I had no problems after that but I just recently experienced heat problem with my Detroit on my 2nd truck. I run a hill daily that would kick the fan on once maybe twice on a hot day and then all of a sudden it was kicking on three four or fives times before getting to the top, I also notice some loss of power that I found out was caused from a leaky air to air. Replacing the air to air now keeps my temp in tune and I now wonder if a leaky air to air could have caused the Big Cam IV to overheat during the time I was running that thermostatic fan clutch?

 

as long as both thermostats are good the low flow system has no problems. The problem cmes when you start trying to build big horsepower, then it wil start to run hot.

You can get all the parts from the older high flow system and convert it back if you need. Allot of them have been done like that