I went through this recently. Turned out my radiator was just shot. I think I have MOST of the fillers and things that came with the car. It turns out my old 4 core brass radiator was shot. I put in a new aluminum radiator from Superior radiators in Michigan ($200) and my temps dropped from 215-230F while cruising to 185F. How hot do you think is too hot when you shut the car off? Is this basically unavoidable? I drove the car for about 100 miles at 80 mph the whole way (probably running around 3,000 rpm's the whole time...my tach wire came loose so I don't know exactly) and never got above 190...great! Then i shut the car off and it went up to 225 or so. Is this a problem? Of course it started a bit hard then, but will this hurt the motor at all? I am still getting some pinging under certain driving conditions, mostly after the car warms up and under load (1/2 throttle or so). I'm not sure if it has more to do with my timing or the fact that I'm using 6X heads from a 350 on a 455 engine. How concerned should I be with the pinging? I can basically "control" it by throttle position and thus avoid it, but I do want to get it taken care of at some point. What's the best way to go about diagnosing this? Sorry this got a bit off topic for this thread.