Joined: Sun Mar 19 2006, 10:20AM
Location: boise id
Posts: 23
you guys keep talking like the al radiator is not as good as the cb one. if you think about it like this the al is over half the price and is as thick as a cb core. so with the price difference you could buy 2 al radiators for the price of one cb. all this talk about no shroud for the aluminum radiator is driving me crazy. have you guys actually looked around for one. look at northerns web site. they have all kinds of shroud for there al radiators. also you want to run a 160 hi flow thermistat not a 180 during the summer. this lets the engine cool at a lower rate because the thermistat opens at 160 not 180, so the water circulates faster and doesnt sit for so long while heating up. al dispates heat faster than cb and does weight less so thats why all the racers use them, not just drag racers, nascar autoxers,hill climbers,rock crawlers and other forms of racing. think about it
Joined: Sun Feb 05 2006, 11:51PM
Location: Pa
Posts: 3064
I have thought about it...and I have a great friend across the street from my shop who does tons of radiators and has for years...and I've stood there and watched him work...I've seen the test results on cooling efficiency...I've seen what the factory uses for materials...I've seen countless streetrodders come in and have a brass/copper rad built because their expensive aluminum racing jobs didn't work...I've seen rads that had the fan or something simple like a misplaced rad cap fall into the core and spin the fins away, needing a new core on b/c rads or turning the alum. jobs into junk.......so you will NEVER see me spend any money on an aluminum radiator....
Joined: Mon Oct 10 2005, 04:15PM
Location: North Bergen, NJ
Posts: 24
I think a lot of people have a difficult time understanding how exactly it is that an aluminum radiator works.
Aluminum is not as efficient as brass/copper straight out, but because of the aluminum construction, they can put thinner and more tubes and fins in the same area. Aluminum itself may not be more efficient, but an aluminum RADIATOR is.
Aluminum is not used for light weight alone. It doesn't matter if it is a high horsepower race car, or an 800 ton piece of industrial equipment. When an efficient liquid heat transfer unit is needed, it is constructed from aluminum.
Getting a fourth core put on a stock radiator is worthless. Tests have shown that 4th core does practically nothing, as the heat from the first 3 cores have already fried the air by that time. No difference at all.
Joined: Sun Feb 05 2006, 11:51PM
Location: Pa
Posts: 3064
stitcherbob wrote ... I looked in a Summit catalog to see what they're sellin for $ 169, and saw it was an aluminum 2 row core rad with 1" tubes. So I asked my buddy in the rad biz why so few tubes & so big of a tube? His reply - the technology to make aluminum tubes 1/2" like brass/copper rads is too expensive and frought with failures because you're drawing the aluminum out too thin. The cores are 2 row because, besides being cheaper to make, they are meant for drag cars that don't see much use and this also allows the air to flow faster around the tubes. And there just isn't much room for tubes that are 1 inch! So now all the coolant runs thru a few large tubes instead of flowing thru many 1/2" tubes.
not to repeat myself, but.......
Aluminum is hard to weld because it can "wick" the heat away from the weld puddle. You don't want to touch any part of the aluminum because the heat travels so fast. When the heat source is hot water/coolant in a car radiator, the same applies: the whole rad heats up quickly. Now you have to get rid of that heat with an air flow that's of enough volume to pull all that heat from the aluminum (it doesn't just give it up, it has to be forced from the metal) and the thicker the material, the longer it takes to pull that heat off of it...... The thinner the material the more efficiently a given airflow can pull heat from it. Copper/brass fins and tubes in those rads can be made very thin. They'll have more surface area than thicker aluminum.
A fourth row on a radiator adds more volume of water/coolant to the system. That is why it cools better.
"800 ton equipment" (usually Terex earthmovers) use a series of aluminum tubes up to 1 1/2" in diameter set into a frame with o-rings on the ends for sealing. The aluminum is for weight savings and cost only, as a brass/ copper tube radiator would cost a fortune, and a steel-tube radiator would probably wear out the front tires
Joined: Mon Oct 10 2005, 04:15PM
Location: North Bergen, NJ
Posts: 24
[quote]
stitcherbob wrote ... I looked in a Summit catalog to see what they're sellin for $ 169, and saw it was an aluminum 2 row core rad with 1" tubes. So I asked my buddy in the rad biz why so few tubes & so big of a tube? His reply - the technology to make aluminum tubes 1/2" like brass/copper rads is too expensive and frought with failures because you're drawing the aluminum out too thin.
Um no. That is called a CHEAP aluminum radiator. My radiator doesn't have those issues at all.
wrote ... The cores are 2 row because, besides being cheaper to make, they are meant for drag cars that don't see much use and this also allows the air to flow faster around the tubes.
This is true of a CHEAP aluminum radiator.
wrote ... And there just isn't much room for tubes that are 1 inch! So now all the coolant runs thru a few large tubes instead of flowing thru many 1/2" tubes.
CHEAP aluminum radiator. A good aluminum radiator will have thinner tubes and more tubes than a copper/brass design. This information is available from ANY major radiator manufacturer.
wrote ... not to repeat myself, but.......
Aluminum is hard to weld because it can "wick" the heat away from the weld puddle. You don't want to touch any part of the aluminum because the heat travels so fast. When the heat source is hot water/coolant in a car radiator, the same applies: the whole rad heats up quickly. Now you have to get rid of that heat with an air flow that's of enough volume to pull all that heat from the aluminum (it doesn't just give it up, it has to be forced from the metal) and the thicker the material, the longer it takes to pull that heat off of it...... The thinner the material the more efficiently a given airflow can pull heat from it. Copper/brass fins and tubes in those rads can be made very thin. They'll have more surface area than thicker aluminum.
Yes, in a CHEAP aluminum raidator. There is no such thing as a brass/copper radiator that has tubes that can compare to mine. I've seen some pretty wild brass/copper setops, but nothing even comes close.
wrote ...
A fourth row on a radiator adds more volume of water/coolant to the system. That is why it cools better.
Since when does increasing the volume of the system automatically improve cooling? As long as a cooling sysytem has a PROPER volume, increasing it any further will have no effects unless one increases the volue to an incredible scale, like if one doubles the capacity or further. The volume added by putting in one additional core will only serve to increase cooling system capacity minimally which will just make it heat up slower. It certainly won't be making the engine run any cooler. Diminishing results. A radiator can be too thick.
wrote ... "800 ton equipment" (usually Terex earthmovers) use a series of aluminum tubes up to 1 1/2" in diameter set into a frame with o-rings on the ends for sealing. The aluminum is for weight savings and cost only, as a brass/ copper tube radiator would cost a fortune, and a steel-tube radiator would probably wear out the front tires
Show me where an Earth Mover manufacturer ever backs up your claim. <span class='smallblacktext'>[ Edited Thu Jul 27 2006, 05:03AM ]</span>
You could take a 180 and throw it on a stove in water and bring the temp up to 180 and see if it opens,most of the thermostats are made in Korea or Kachinga,that 180 might actually open at 197 if that company has a variance of +/- 10%.Course they could be the same company makin' that thermometer that you put in the water to............Glen
195 is the default temp on most, if not all, big blocks. So if you haven't changed it, odds are that is what is in there. I looked up a 67 T&C on PartsAmerica, I noticed they had 195's as Economy, Standard and Premium, but then there was a Mr Gasket High Performance 180 degree one. Very possible that High Performance is just a cooler than stock part. So I guess the 160 I use must be Ultra Performance!
Glen mentions a good habit, actually test the thermostat before installin it. My dad taught me to do this when installing a new one, or when troubleshooting cooling problems. Put a small pot on the stove, heat the water with a candy thermometer to watch temps and suspend the stat on a wire or coat hanger. You don't want it setting on the bottom of the pan next to the heat source. The one time I didn't do this last year when putting my 440 together it bite me in the keister, bought a 180, cause 195 just seemed to high, and it didn't open till 215! Lesson learned, LISTEN TO DAD!
