I have a 96 ford 7.3 powerstroke. the truck has 179,000 miles on it and i'm very worried that the engine will overheat. how do i control the temperature and keep the thing running cool. where i live its very hot and humid. At 65-70 mph its heats up a little to hot for comfort.

 

Need a little history:
-normal temp around 200 or so?
-how often is it past this?
-are you driving normal or only when towing?
-does the temp get high and stay there, or is it jumping up and down?

 

Your kinda in the wrong section bud, but my first recommendations would be double checking yoru T stat, clean your radiator with some scrubbing bubbles and adding some water wetter (redline).
If its way over it ain't gonna fix it but if its just sometimes it will make a difference.

 

Ya, I was headed that direction too, but wanted to see a little more info. It is possible the radiator is building up "gunck" and not getting very good flow thru. I had once, back in the day, I put a temp gauge on and found out it read 230 all the time. Had the radiator cleaned out and it magically went back to 190. YIkes.
T stat another good possibility.
Good places to start.

 

i dont have a temp. gauge. But on a real humid day it will get up to half way, which concerns me cause im sure if i went a little farther it would overheat. Since it is older i want to keep it running a long time, so i only figure that i need to keep the heat down and run it as cold as possible.

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and it doesn't heat up alot, only on humid days, i just want to know ways to keep the temp. down. Thank yall.

 

i would get a gauge and see what the temps really are. if your talking about the level in the res. raiseing and lowering. thats expansion of the coolant (pressure) normal really but need more infor as stated above

 

x2 definitely get a gauge, they aren't too pricy.
You can also wash your your radiator pretty nicely with a couple cans of scrubbling bubbles and a soft brush. Don't put to much pressure to it or it bends the fins. been there done that.

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wooooooooooooow drunk double post my bad

 

The 7.3 cooling system is EXTREAMLY over built, on a stockish truck, working properly, you will never have a coolant issue.

Get a real gauge and see what the temp really is. The factory gauge has settings, cold, normal and hot... It does not read a temp, just three zones.