That would suck brand new water pump and a pain to deal with

 

i'd remove the t-stat and run it a couple of days without one, just to see what happens. i'd expect it to stay cold as hell, down around 160. while that t-stat is out, i'd boil-test it, to see if its cracking open around 175-180 like its supposed to.

also check around the t-stat area to make sure you don't have an obstruction, like a piece of gasket or some other foreign object, maybe an old freeze plug or something.

if t-stat is opening correct, and there's no foreign object, then i'd suspect the radiator.

what did the original 318 cool before the swap ?

 

Very good ideas, I swear I need to buy stock in coolant. What I may do is pull the new Water pump since it has a warranty and say it isn't working. Then when I put it back together leave the T-stat out. And see what happens.

The most aggravating part is all these parts are new. I really hate to have to go back in and dissassemble brand new parts to see if I got a bad one what happened to being able to believe in a product.

Now I am no father along than before. Could be T-stat, could be water pump, could be radiator, could be running lean.

And now all of the sudden this squeeking noice, fun never ends.

 

Y' know, back a few years ago, one of the 4wd mags built up a Dodge Ram for off roading.
They did a crap load of work to the motor, and after that, it overheated like mad. They did all the obvious cooling system checks and rechecks and nothing helped.
Then they checked the sparkplugs...and found the motor was lean.
Desperate, they called around and finally found a MOPAR engine guy who suggested they run a larger injector. The replaced the stock 21# injectors with 24# ones and solved thier problem.
Now I would hesitate to say thats your problem, but if you exhaust all your normal cooling related tests and R&Rs, perhaps you might look elsewhere.

 

along that line.....
OP said a 318 was replaced with a larger displacement 360.
does this require an injector swap ?
does it require a PCM swap ? if so did you do that?
(maybe.. the 360 pcm squirts more fuel)

 

again hopefully to help anyone else who may have this issue I finally fixed it. I spent some time and put a new radiator in and also installed my SCT tune. And it overheated quicker than it ever had.............so I thought I had it in right but hemifever was convinced I had the distributor off a tooth. Turns out he was right. I pulled it and the gear was off a tooth fixed that put the distributor back together and it wouldn't start so i was pissed I jumped up and started to take it apart and noticed I didn't plug in the distributor wire Plugged that up started it up and it idled up to 199 then down to 190. I am still breaking it in but I went and drove it kind of hard since any type of driving before would send the temp up and over 220. After 20 minutes of running around it stayed between 187-193 no matter what I did. So check that box it will run with dizzy off but that was the issue

Also just to add the SCT tune has completly transformed this truck driving this thing is AWSOME

 

Looks like it's slowly coming togeather, now when r u going to give us some updated pic's and possibly a vid

 

hahaha as my wife has said everytime you get it together you take it back apart. got the engine done now my interior is in pieces one day it will be done and I will get some pics

 

have fun with it and we'll be lookin for those pics