At my wits end, motor getting hot. Input please

[lil hoodlum]

Hello everyone.

I haven't been much of a regular poster as of late. Life changes and all. Life changed for me again as of late. After nearly 17 years of employment, I was layed off. Business closing down.

Well my cocern is that I will likely have to commute to work as well the job search. My truck is my daily driver. I have been pretty forunate in that I haven't had but 2 or so breakdowns in the last 3 years. And unforunately I was involved in an accident a little of a year ago, so the old girl is banged up.


Ok, so my issue is that my motor gets really hot. Granted I live in Texas and it does get hot here, but I'm not too comfortable driving around with the motor @ 210 degrees. This is not a new issue however, it is not likely that I will live just down the road from work.

Specs:

350 sbc. Stock, and way too many miles on the rebuild 18 years ago.
3 speed manual
No A/C
HEI distrubator
ceramic coated headers
4 barrel Edelbrock carburator #1405, aluminum Edelbrock intake
stock heads
New 3 row Champion radiator
Stock mechanical fan with heavy duty radiator shroud.


I've been researching "overheating" threads posted on the forum and have found some good info. Now heating a wall though

Motor has recently gone up to 210 degrees before I pulled over to cool things down.

New sparkplug wires and sparkplugs, gapped @ .045

Cleaned out and rebuilt carburator. Drivers-side air-fuel mixture circuit was plugged up. Since cleared out. I feel that I have "enriched" the mixture thinking I might have been too lean previously.

Initial timing is 13 degrees BTDC. Vaccum advance is new and is in working condition. # AR10. Stock springs and weights in distributor oiled up and freely moving.

Recently replaced 3 inches fan spacer with a 1.5 inch spacer as I felt fan was too far in the shround.

Replaced thermostat with new 180 degree unit. Just for grins boiled the old one, which was a 180 degree unit and it didn't open up until 215 degrees.

I feel that the waterpump is working correctly as it does "pressurize" the radiator hoses.



Any ideas?

Something I may be missing?