Thread: cooling tips

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I have worked in a radiator shop for 10 years and want to give something back for all the great advice i have recieved here. car only heating when sitting for a short lenght of time (problem is no fan shroud , electric fan not operating properly , fan not operating properly or low coolant level. too test fan put a sheet of paper infront of radiator with car running fan should suck paper tight to radiator and hold it their.car over heats all the time? several causes but fairly easy to find. bad thermistat(car overheats top radiator hose never gets hot)collapsing bottom radiator hose(with car in park rev engine to about 3000 rpm note if bottom rad hose is collapsing due to no spring inside of hose( more common than most people would think)clogged radiator(only way to verify is remove radiator and take to rad shop to flow test .only takes a few minutes and you no if its a rad problem (havent seen many problems with aluminun rads) anybody having problems can pm me and I will be glad to give any advice thanks

Thanks for that good information. Since you are in the business, let me ask you something. How cost effective is it to have a radiator recored? Reason I ask is we got a nice radiator with my Son's '49, at least the top and bottom tank are nice but the core looks like it should be redone. What would be a typical cost to use his tanks and have a new core installed.

Don

I worked in the radiator shop several years ago. had to find a new job due to high lead levels in my blood stream.I still stop in the shop off and on to shoot the bull.usually a recore is cheaper than a new radiator and should carry the same warranty as a new one.if done by a quality shop the recore would probably be better than a brand new one.price wise im guessing the recore job will run 175$- 275$ this is just a guess on the older stuff I will need the core demensions to give you a accurate price.also keep in mind prices vary from shop to shop and some shops think they can stick it to you good luck

I have been curious about something for a number of years. I originally built my 36 Plymouth in the 80's. I bought a radiator from some company in New Jersey that at that time advertised in Street Rodder. It was a decent looking radiator with a built in transmission cooler. However it was very thick. I built a fan riser for my 318 that put the fan in the center of the radiator. Cooled great! Then I added air. Had to get rid of the mechanical fan and run an electric. Even with a shroud it would run hot in city traffic or at idle. Then it began puking after I shut it off but not in the catch can. I pulled it and took it to a radiator shop and they told me it had minute cracks in the bottom that would open when it got really hot. He said the copper on the bottom was too thin and would flex. They stiffened it and that seemed to solve that problem. In discussing the heating problem he said that it is possible to have too thick of a radiator. I eventually bought a Walker radiator, shroud and electric fan and that seems to have solved the cooling problem. Is it possible that the radiator was too thick?

I never heard of a problem with a too thick of radiator.however the thicker the radiator is the less effiecent the rows of tubes cool due to hot air moving past them.I built a 4 row radiator( alot of people call them 4 core but radiators only have 1 core the core is everything except the tanks)for my buddys stock car and it ran cool in 90degree weather.most cars running air cond.have at least 3 rows except newer cars they use alot of aluminum cores and have wider and less rows of tubes is it possible the condensor for the ac could be restricting proper air flow thru your radiator. Im not sure on the cracks but i do know some manufactures radiators back then were very poor quality.did repair several brand new ones

Thanks for your input!

I had a radiator built for my '27 years ago by the BrassWorks, and after a few years of shaking around up front it started to leak. When I took it to a local radiator shop he said it was because of the solder that Californians are mandated to use because of the environment. He said he has seen that before. Don't know if it was a sales pitch or not, but he resoldered it for me anyway.

Don

that could be I know their are several diffrent combination of solder heck if it works good its got to be bad for the enviroment right

i dont get why people waste money on recores sometimes.... unless its had holes patched in it all over the place... you might as well save a few bucks and just have the tanks off clean and rod it out and comb the fins back..... some people seem to think that flattened fins or an old radiator is just doom

Hey, as long as you guys are talking cooling system issues. I have one myself. My willys has a radiator that is lower than the engine and have had problems with coolant at hot idling temps coming out of my overflow tank. I have done a lot of thinking about this and have decided to install a moroso expansion tank at a high point on my firewall. they want the lower fitting on the tank hooked to an inlet hose and a smaller side upper fitting hooked to the radiator. It uses a radiator cap on the tank and still has an overflow nipple also on that neck for the cap. I have a weiand 8208 sbc water pump which has the lower hose hooked to it then right above that I have one heater hose hooked to it. The other heater hose is off the manifold. On the top of this pump is a threaded hole that I have plugged off..is this hole an inlet..or an outlet. weiand tells me it is an outlet, but the rather unfriendly tech person also tells me any heater hoses are outlets..duh, don't think so, and wasn't about to argue with him. I can't find any info anywhere on this. I had bought a Canton tank but returned that because they didn't know how it worked or how to hook it up. Maybe someone here has an idea about that pump fitting or has used one of these before. thanks..

I had very good luck with a one-man shop named K's in Plainfield, NJ. The guy charged me $90 to boil, rod, and re-solder the radiator in my '29 (pictured) and did the job in a few days. That radiator came from the same NJ maker that LarryH mentioned above.

K's does a lot of such work in this area, and leaves the radiator on cars like mine unpainted so OEM paint can be used on restoration jobs, if desired. If you can, find a shop like this one, where the owner knows his or her stuff and his willing to treat custom cars as what they are. Since then, my cooling problems are gone, although it does puke coolant every now and then, so I'm going to fit an overflow tank.

Is there something that can be used to patch a fan shroud? Mine broke off when backed into a while back. The shroud still mounts and is mostly there, but the 90% of the top of the shroud has a 1/2 gap (because the plastic broke) between it and the radiator. I'm guessing this is partly the reason my temp goes to 90C when idling in hot weather (normal operating temp is 82C)

One cooling problem not yet mentioned is one peculiar to our hobby. Stuffing a big engine in a tight engine room often leaves nowhere for the cooling air to get out after passing through the rad. Often the car is lowered, so the air can't get out underneath, either. Sometimes it will blow out the front, under the bumper, and be drawn back through the rad, reducing the cooling even more.
I put a Dodge Red Ram hemi in a '39 International and had to remove the inner fender panels to get it to cool. Ran it for a while with no hood, that worked too, but I didn't like the look.

my engine runs cool but i have alot of underhood heat also. i have a large hood scoop so I cut 10 large holes under it to let some air into the engine compartment.It seems to help some.I may drill some in the inner fender wells to let more out. the headers seem to produce alot of heat under the hood.I donot have a good solution to this problem.

Originally Posted by R Pope

One cooling problem not yet mentioned is one peculiar to our hobby. Stuffing a big engine in a tight engine room often leaves nowhere for the cooling air to get out after passing through the rad. Often the car is lowered, so the air can't get out underneath, either. Sometimes it will blow out the front, under the bumper, and be drawn back through the rad, reducing the cooling even more.
I put a Dodge Red Ram hemi in a '39 International and had to remove the inner fender panels to get it to cool. Ran it for a while with no hood, that worked too, but I didn't like the look.

two words my friend.... liquid nitrogen

Originally Posted by wrenchinrick

my engine runs cool but i have alot of underhood heat also. i have a large hood scoop so I cut 10 large holes under it to let some air into the engine compartment.It seems to help some.I may drill some in the inner fender wells to let more out. the headers seem to produce alot of heat under the hood.I donot have a good solution to this problem.

if you used header bags, it would keep a lot of the header heat out of the engine compartment....... but there's only so much you can accomplish and they aren't exactly cheap