1934 eight cooling system

Posted by Bill Hawley On 2022/10/1 17:22:15

It's bee a while since I posted because I generally work slowly and in spurts. Bottom line is that I can't get my car to not overheat. I've forward and back flushed the radiator and the engine separately twice. I've taken the water pump off and looked at it to see if it's intact. It is. It looks old but otherwise OK. I've removed the water jacket cover and inspected the passage. It's clear. Everything seems to be flowing. Water coming out the bottom hose is cooler than water entering the top hose. Temperatures along the water jacket cover seem pretty consistent.
Whenever I run the car, within about 10 minutes the water temperature gets to 200+ and I can hear it starting to hiss out of the overflow. The bellows device seems stuck so I have been operating the car with the louvers wide open.
I feel like it must be the radiator. I know you have advised me to not take the radiator out but I am running out of ideas. Should the water temperature in normal conditions be somewhere around 180 F?