Aluminum radiators? How do you feel about them?

You are driving out of town for a show & it's about 700 miles each way. You are out in the middle of nowhere & something under hood lets go & blows coolant everywhere. You tow into a small town w/ your radiator leaking at top or bottom tank. There's a small radiator shop in town.
Now which radiator do you wish you had?

 

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I have several cars with Aluminum radiators and never ever had any issues but if a tube were to spring a leak I would do the barrs leak or a couple of cigaretts in the radiator will stop it up enough to get home. They also make your ride run a little cooler and thats howe I see it.

 

^cigarettes? Wha?

 

Yes, old fix for small leaks. Ground pepper is also used.

 

Yep--old guy trick. If you split a tube you can pinch it off with needle nose and take a few cigaretts and peal the paper off and dump the tobacco in the radiator and it will also plug the tube--Black pepper was also used but I personally never tried it. The tobacco thing got me 150 miles and home so It worked for me.

 

or an egg or 2..

but if the lower or upper tank splits open ,and bad,, none of that **** will get you home

 

an egg white or 2 no yokes. add the pepper too and for a few days it will make you hungry to drive the car, smells like breakfast.

 

OK I'm good with that. I know its a bad quality but I always ***ume that every Joe, ****, and Harry is a do it yourselfer.

Someone mentioned something about a 1,400 mile trip and your radiator springs a leak in Podunk Center. Remember that JB-Weld is your friend. Its not any more traditional than an aluminum radiator is but getting home is.

 

I have already posted ... on this thread and nothing I have seen has changed my opinion BUT ...

When this same discussion came up on another board, the results were about the same as here on the HAMB. The older guys almost always say br***/copper The newer guys say aluminum. I believe that the older guys go to and use what has been sucessful for them all those years and the younger guys may tend to be a little more receptive to new ideas and new technology. Because this is a traditional minded board ( about pre 65 Traditional Hot Rods ) ... I am some what surprised at the high numbers that aluminum recieves here. Maybe $$$ is somewhat a contributing factor. The aluminum ones do cost less.

A friend just got his new Walker " Z " series for a Deuce ... $715
The SBC is on the floor and the Roadster is getting a Desoto HEMI

 

Yes DR, cost is a factor. Even when I was selling Walkers it blew me away. Al for 200 or br*** for triple that.............the br*** one better add 100hp or come with a hot blonde for that price differential!

 

Not all of us have the kind of disposable income that warrants getting something for triple the price when you don't necessarily get triple the benefit. I'd get a good br*** radiator if I could afford it though.

 

With respect to repair of an aluminum radiator, I've found (the hard way) that truck stop repair type places are quite common, stay open later and most of them have the ability to weld/braze aluminum. I have ran aluminum rad's since 99, all griffin, and the one problem I've had with my radiator involved mounting it low and hitting the parking curb thing. My brother is still running the first radiator I bought. I have an aluminum radiator in my mustang after blowing two copper ones, and I am putting an aluminum one in my 56 I'm building. Weight, price and durability are my reasons for choosing aluminum.

 

I live in the Balt/wash area which is a pretty big metropolis when combined. I had to go to the eastern shore rural farming area to find a shop that could or would recore a radiator. He does a lot of farm equipment. We got talking and he was interested in getting a heliarc machine to repair aluminum radiators so I guess he is seeing them too. All his work is word of mouth. I drove past his shop many times and never knew it was a radiator shop. He recored my original 34 rad. 550.00 All of the modern plastic tank aluminum core rads are pure disposables like paper plates.

 

The newer Ford 350 trucks use a mig weld to join AL top tank to it's AL core. Seems if there's enough material thickness, a mig would be an option for a repair.

 

That's a production line deal. Not many people are set up to MIG aluminum, and it's very difficult to get proper heat in the weld when doing small areas. I think you'd be much more likely to have further problems than if it was repaired with a TIG.

 

Intresting reading....more variables in cooling an engine than I knew including the water pump pressure variable.
On a personal level, I once had a 49 ford pickup with a mustang 289 and the mustang radiator....had a pressure cap..don't remember what value..previous owner parked it because he couldn't get it to cool out on the hiway. I found it had no T-stat and installed a 180....cured the problem.
I don't pretend to understand the formulas posted on this thread. I always thought I fixed my problem because I was now keeping the coolant in the radiator longer to properly cool it...never gave a thought that I was also keeping the coolant in the block longer....HMMMM...so now....why did my "fix" work? Maybe because the fast-moving coolant didnt' have time to accept heat from the engine before going to the radiator to be cooled?.Was it because of cavitation? Probably because my little pickup had 4.27 rear gears and on the hiway the 289 was really buzzing.
Side note....I'm gonna drill a few 1/8 inch holes in my 'stat before cranking up my new engine in my coupe...not so much to help cooling but to know I got the entire cooling system full of coolant. I hate starting an engine that's had an empty cooling system with a t-stat in it....gotta wait until the stat opens to get the system full and pouring cold coolant in on a hot engine [when the t-stat opens] always freaked me out....never had a failure from it but damn..I've always been taught not to pour cold water in a hot engine..
BTW...when I intalled an old griffen swap meet radiator in my 350-chevy astro van it dropped the temp drastically...but my old radiator was an aluminum/plastic-tank OEM with small capacity and many, many miles on it.
Griffen radiator made the van stop heating in traffic...I even removed the electric fan that had always been on the front of the old radiator. MY old 46 chev pickup with a 350 came to me with an aluminum radiator..no shroud...never, ever ran hot.
All that said, I have a new Walker br***/copper radiator for my 34 ford coupe..I plan to fab up a shroud and I'm gonna try to run an engine-mounted fan. If the fan hits the lower portion of the radiator, I'll make sure the shroud is a close fit [fan blades 1/2 in the hole] around the fan blades with the square holes/flaps in the top of the shroud

 

That's interesting. My little 259 couldn't get the temp up to 140 without a thermostat in it in the spring when I got it back together. I bought a 160 but I should have gotten a 180. It runs too cool at 160 for my taste but I haven't changed it yet. I wanted to wait for the real summer heat. That's with a recored original radiator and the stock 4 blade Studebaker fan.

 

I ran a br*** rad in the Pusher at first a 4 core cross flow out of a 3/4 ton Suburban, 2 11" fans but very seldom turned the second fan on. I went to a 195 stat for winter driving. It never got above 140 in the 10 miles to work in the winter and very seldom got much above 195 in the summer unless it was around 100 out and I was stopped for any length of time in traffic.

I destroyed the big rad in a snow storm. Put in a 2 core out of a mid sized wagon. Went to a 5 blade flex fan and no shroud. Fugured I would need to fab a shroud for summer. It still ran cool in the summer and stayed in the 140 to 160 range in the winter.

I checked the stat as well as the temp gauge with a pot of water and a candy thermometer that I had calibrated pretty close. I still don't know why that particular engine runs so cool. I'm pretty sure it has very little to do with the radiator.

Never the less when I am shooting for a specific build I choose my radiator accordingly. I am an old guy and it doesn't reallty matter to me which one I have unless its an issue of makeing the onlooking public happy. Although now that I know that it bugs so many people I may go exclusivly to aluminum.

 

I'm pretty sure the lugnuts on MOST of our hot rods aren't "original" either...so what?

 

I actually do have the original lug nuts for my '61 Willys. But the fella before me replaced the studs and nuts.
Fortunately the truck is in my back yard and my dog peed on them so now that have fauxtina.

 

Dog pee to create fauxtina is for the most part unknown...don't give all our secrets away.

 

i feel bad....

 

Not to anyone with both a dog and a car in the back yard...

 

OK Nash usually I agree with you but .....when the engine heats up and you have too fast of a flow, the water goes through the radiator too fast to cool and re enters the engine at a hotter temp and guess what? The Stat will be open at its fullest at this point and the only way to slow the water through the radiator to get it cooler by staying in the air path that cools the water is to slow the pump down. Then the water can have time to cool and enter the engine and help the cooling of the block/cylinders bores/heads. I run an 11 second street car that drives in traffic in the heat of the summer and its one of those engines that everyone seems to think run hot all the time. Its a Pontiac engine and never gets hotter than 175 degrees and stays between 160-175. This temp has proven to be the most efficient at the drag strip and from what I read and have proven is that with stock Pontiac 185 stats to a 160 is a .10 of a second gain in the 1/4. Pontiacs did slow their pumps down for AC to help with cooling as they had the condensor also heating and restricting the air before entering the radiator fins.
Oh and by the way, a thermostat stuck open is better than not running one at all. You don't want to send water through the radiator in seconds. This is also why they make a thermostat flow disc. It has a hole in the center and restricts the flow but will not work that great to get your car up to temp in much of a hurry..
So my friend , I would like to agree with you..... but then we'd both be wrong.

 

They are cool with me as long as you lay some black paint on there.

 

You have it backwards. Watch a thermostat in action and then you might figure it out.
Put a thermostat in water on the stove. Heat it up. It will start opening at a certain point. Shut off the heat. From that initial temp, unless you elevate the water temperature it will not open all the way. Then elevate the temp until it is open all the way. Then turn off the heat. Watch trhe thermostat. As the water cools, gradually, the thermostat will start to close, gradually.

 

That is very true.
Thermostats are designed to only have a very small crack open during normal operation.
When the engine gets used harder, the stat will open further as the temp rises.

A 180 stat will be fully open around 200 degrees.

 

.............resulting in; Same song, third verse. The faster the coolant m*** flows, the more heat is exchanged out through the radiator.