Who here has a snowplow

[Jspafford]

I have a question for you all.

At work we have a 2005 K2500HD. It's a Reg Cab longbed 6.0L Auto. Truck has 106K on it mostly towing trailer from Indiana to Ohio. It has also a Meyer 7.5' plow.

Last week we got some snow. I had the plow on it and cleared our parking lot. Another guy needed to drop off a rental trailer with it, he needed the 4WD to back the trailer up a driveway.

He was stuck in stop and go traffic.

He said the truck started dinging at him and he looked at the temp guage and it was in the red. The truck then shut down to limp mode. He had to keep going because there was no where to turn off. Once he got moving again the truck cooled back down and then was fine.

Is it common for them to overheat with a plow up and blocking the radiator? It was in the 30's outside, but he was towing a 30' trailer in stop and go. What I don't get is the truck regularly tows 12K from Indiana to Ohio in 80-90 degree weather and has never overheated...

What gives and should we install a thermostat controlled electric fan on the the radiator?

Thoughts...

 

[smokey]

some trucks I have ran that had plows mounted would over heat others wouldn't
The Chevy trucks were more prone to over heat than the fords were.

 

[metalmacguyver]

is it common? i have no idea.

is the solution to it an electric fan? definately.

 

[Jspafford]

Well it's not my truck, so I mentioned to them we might need to install an electric fan, their response was, "Why were they towing with the plow on?"

So I guess I am supposed to drop the plow everytime we need something moved.

I will work on the fan.

 

[JFA_Spyderman]

Yo,
When i worked maintanence in the mountians of Colorado, we never had problems with cooling unless there was a coolant leak. However, i always had the plow low and angled off to the right when i was not plowing, mainly because of how much wind resistance there was. I cannot even calculate how many MPG we lost because of it. LOL.

And i never had the plow on at highway speeds. That much weight on the front end of our truck and at that speed felt very uncomfortable.

 

[truckman]

i had a buddy that worked for a GM dealer. I remember him bitchen about dumb old guys (no offense) that would come in and say there truck over heats in the middle of winter. Well they would have a plow on it, have it all the way up and straight ahead. I guess all it took was to drop the plow down some so some air could flow and it fixed the problems. He said it seemed that GM had the most problems w/ it out of every thing that came through the door.

 

[Jspafford]

That's what I told em, drop the plow a little.