Why is overheating irreversible?

[Nealius]

So there I was chasing an AI in one of their infinite loops, when I overheated my rad temps. I immediately cut throttle, went into a dive, and opened the rad flaps. Rad temp continued to rise until two minutes later my engine seized. 

 

Common logic would say that removing the heat source and introducing cooling would cause temps to fall, but apparently that logic doesn't apply to warbird engines. Why is that? 

[grafspee]

First, manual opening radiator flaps in spitfire is pointless since above certain temp i think it is 120C or something they go wide open regardless of flap control switch.

Second, once temp go way above temp limit coolant is boiling extremely fast so pressure relive valve is venting coolant out, in matter of 20s-30s you may went out most of your coolant, so when you see that temp is raising above limit cut down power immediately and pray.

Coolant reservoir tank is very small, this is small copper tank just above reduction gearbox, once you start venting coolant there is no going back.

Edited October 6, 2021 by grafspee

[Nealius]

Ah that makes sense. If you overheat a radial can you cool it down by diving and reducing power on account of it not having coolant to vent away?

[grafspee]

2 hours ago, Nealius said:

Ah that makes sense. If you overheat a radial can you cool it down by diving and reducing power on account of it not having coolant to vent away?

It is hard to answer, if you overheat a little bit that you can get away with this, if you overheat by far it may damage vital parts of the engine and soon failure can happen.

To your questions, since air do the cooling yes you can cool down radial with dive and power reduction always, but this does not mean that your engine will be fine tho.