Did you observe the temperature gauge pausing at 180°F like Corey mentioned? It should heat up to 180°F fairly quickly, hang out there for at least a few of minutes, possibly rise to 190°F-ish, then drop back down to 180°F once the fans kick one (based on Dave's description)....mine is set-up the same way.
If it heats up and blows right past 180°F, I would suspect the thermostat is not opening properly/completely.
That is, I suspect what we are dealing with here. But I have not been able to get a good look at it this way. Between my eyes and the gauge, I don't trust either.
As far as everything else is concerned, the two fans are back online, wired up to come on together which they do, pulling or pushing in the correct direction. This has all been confirmed. It's hard to know exactly when they come on because I didn't hook up the computer during this and the gauge is somewhere between 10-12 degrees low, depending on where in the temperature range the engine is running. But my best guess was about 195, and I reported it as such.
As far as the other comments are concerned, I was doing my best to follow the suggestions of the engine builder. Perhaps I misunderstood the instruction to
Pop the lever on the cap and let the bubbles out into the overflow tank.
Which is why, after doing all of this we took the car out on the road, with the results as reported above. The odd thing is that before we hooked up the pusher fan again, when the engine was running on the radiator fan only, this was not a significant problem. Engine ran fine, although a little hotter than I would like with the a/c on, and better the higher the rpms. But as soon as we wired up the pusher fan and startd driving the car again it started running hot and now, even if I pull the power to the pusher fan relay and run it on the radiator fan alone again, it gets hot.
This weekend I think I'm going to grab a hose, open the radiator and run the engine at a higher rpm to see if I can determine if the water is flowing through the radiator. If it isn't, I have to presume that the thermostat froze, because nothing else makes any sense.