Difficult to resolve overheating problem

I'm not sure if this belongs here, Duratec Maintence, or Duratec Performance.

It is about how an overheating problem was resolved.

Problem: Engine overheating when driven at highway speeds for more than a half hour. Sometimes a little longer on a cool day. Gauge would climb all the way to the top and not come down until the car was parked and allowed to cool down. Often accompanied by trans starting to "bang shift".

Vehicle: 96 Coutour SE, Duratec V6 with automatic trans.

Modifications: Battery relocated to trunk. B&M trans filter added, mounted near where battery used to reside. Trans cooler added. There wasn't room in front of the radiator so it is slightly off to the side. Fog lights removed to provide air flow to the trans cooler. SVT cat back exhaust. Mystery mod. Optimized Y pipe. MIL eliminators. Home made cold air intake consisting of factory airbox with a large cold air tube brought up to it from near the left missing fog light. Drop in K&N air filter) Grill removed. This car runs extremely strong for the modifications. With an automatic trans it fells nearly as strong as my SVT. The owner is a car nut with several other high performance cars. In the past he has been a very active autoX participant, but not recently.

Prior attempts to resolve: Replaced Water Pump. Replaced fans. Replace thermostat more than once. Flush cooling system. Replace radiator. Remove grill for more airflow. Remove fog lights for more air flow. Flush cooling system. Inspect A/C condenser for either inefficiency or causing an air restriction across the radiator. Incidentally, the A/C worked flawlessly when overheating. Bang head against the wall.

When I got involved we confirmed that both fans were on when it was overheating. That fans were blowing the correct direction, pulling air across the radiator from the front of the car into the engine area.

Resolution: I'm still waiting for more thorough validation, but removing the belly pan immediately behind the front bumper seems to have done the trick. The thinking was that the normal airflow was disturbed, particularly with the addition of the trans cooler, and that airflow needed additional improvement.

So for anyone that has increased the power and added a trans cooler to discover an overheating problem may want to consider removing the belly pan.

check and see if you coolant tank is over flowing I once had a problem with my dodge stealth were the head gasket cracked just enough to were it put compression into the cooling and it was filling the cooling system with pressure thus pushing the anti freeze out the resivour and then over heating about a half hour of driving... but it wasnt pushing anitfreeze into the oil just compression from the cyl into the cooling. just going on a problem I once had... hope it helps... I didnt notice the push back of antifreeze til I got under the car and seen all the AF on the inside of the front tire.