Excessive heat in engine bay

[Douglas]

Excessive heat in the engine bay.
340 six barrel with Doug's headers, ceramic coating. Engine coolant is running normal. I have a 26 inch aluminum rad, 7 blade fan.
Heat is so bad the air cleaner cover will burn your fingers.
any suggestions??

[JS29]

How fresh is your engine? Fresh engines have more friction, more heat.   

[7212Mopar]

I removed the blank off plates of the Rallye hood scoop on a Challenger to let the heat escape. Don't think Cuda can be done easily.

[autoxcuda]

Get a heat gun and measure it.

Also measure you coolant temp near the sending unit, at top radiator hose, at lower radiator hose. Running just after you stop during drive where everything gets up to temperature.

My air cleaner is hot after a trip too. Not like the plastic stuff on modern cars.

[Dakota]

I have a 340 4bbl with stock exhaust manifolds.   There is a lot of heat coming off my engine as well after I shut it down, even with the exhaust pipes wrapped.   I always pop the hood once it's back in the  garage to help bleed the heat away.   This is a practice Jay Leno apparently uses to protect the hood paint on his many cars. 

[Dmod1974]

IF it is actually abnormal, and that is a big IF, I'd be checking for retarded ignition timing and excessively lean air/fuel ratio first.  Those will heat up the engine bay far more than anything else will.  I've seen exhaust manifolds and headers glow from it.  Even if the engine was overheating it won't generate as much underhood heat as that.

If nothing obvious is going on, it's probably normal - especially with headers.  Ceramic coating allegedly helps, but IMO the engine bay is still an oven regardless of what coatings are on the headers.  I have not noticed that much of a difference.

[Douglas]

     Excessive heat problem solved. Engine was just rebuilt. The brand new thermostat was defective and did not open.
Just FYI  buy yourself a laser point thermometer and check temps often , Don,t trust any new parts to work properly.
Thanks for the responses.

[Dmod1974]

Was your temp sender defective too?  Didn't you say the engine coolant temps were normal?