Cooling was all ways going to be something that required a bit of careful planing because the Meteor is more than capable of burning up to one gallon of petrol a Minute , so there would be lots of heat to get rid of if you turned the wick up and got going.
As I was going for quite a small frontal profile I reckoned that I may not be able to get a large enough radiator in front of the engine and also I thought that I would often be running static so more possible problems there . I decided to mount the radiators at the back of the vehicle and fan cool them at all times so that I would hopefully be in control of water temperatures from the cockpit.
I had good success with cooling a R R Merlin using a CVRT radiator ( Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance Tracked ) so I contacted a Military and army surplus dealer I have bought parts from in the past called Marcus Glenn . He had a number of CVRT radiators still in wooden crates for sale .
A round trip to Lincolnshire and back in a day and I had two fully reconditioned radiators that fitted perfectly fwd and aft on top of the back end of the chassis rails.
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I mounted the six 12 volt fans in pairs on a plywood lid that fitted with a seal around the outside edges ,I then test wired them to suck air through the radiators, I would be able to reverse this to blow at a later date should it be necessary. I wired the fans in pairs planing to have three independent switches in the cockpit.
I then moved my attention the the front end I wanted as much coolant capacity as possible so I fabricated a stainless steel header tank with a pressure cap fitted and also a posh polished brass filler cap that would protrude above the front cowling , the tank was tested to a pressure of 15 psi and fitted with a 14 psi cap.
The water pump on a Meteor is situated at the front end of the engine and immediately above the starter motor, in the Centurion installation it draws it water from the engine mounting square section chassis rails on each side via the twin inlet ports of the pump ,then under pump pressure it goes separately to the cylinder blocks and heads then unites again in the heated manifold that I removed from the top of the engine and then to the fan cooled radiators and header tank ,before being returned to the chassis rails, feeds are also taken of of the circuit to cool the generator engine. I fabricated a stainless steel mixing chamber to mount under the water pump so that cooled water returning from the radiators was fed into the water pump with no constrictions. |
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Cooling System Gallery
The Radiators and the mixing chamber were connected using 2 ins od stainless steel tube and heater hose. To help reduce any back pressure on the system and to give some flexibility during heat expansion I allowed the stainless steel tube to slide in the clamps.
The cooling system was now complete . There was nothing more I could do until I was ready to run the Meteor up to temperature some ten months later.