My 968 is still on its original radiator and the aux fans aren't sounding too good these days so I'm going to replace all of it at once.
Instead of going with the OE-style plastic end tank radiator I've been thinking about something more beefy and Wizard Cooling is one of the few vendors who offers an upgrade: https://wizardcooling.com/i-30501843-1986-91-porsche-944-turbo-1992-95-porsche-968-2026-100.html
I have heard of these guys here and there over the years but I don't think I have ever met or talked with anyone that has actually purchased and used their products.
Anyone from the hive have experience with Wizard Cooling?
(For what it's worth, the other option I have is CSF, and I have read mixed reviews about them and their setup: https://csfrace.com/new-csf-porsche-944-high-performance-radiator-fan-shroud-kit/)
I thought the first one was expensive at $600, but then the second one came in at twice as much!
I like the second one only because all the pieces fit each other and it's a bolt on solution......I like to drive my classic cars and anything I can do to make them more reliable is worth the cost - within reason. Up to you to decide if this is reasonable enough......
No experience with either company.
In reply to MiniDave :
The problem with the CSF "all the pieces that fit each other" setup is that they actually cause 944s to overheat with the AC on in traffic because the shroud is a crappy design. Typical example of someone designing something out of CAD and not bothering to exhaustively test in the real world. I would just be buying the radiator itself, which is only a couple bucks more than the Wizard.
The OE plastic end tank radiators are $800 so either the Wizard or the CSF is actually a savings over the dealer. Welcome to Porsche ownership...
So you got 25-30 years out of the oe and are thinking of not replacing it with another? From my experience the oe rads were never a problem. I would look at adding an oil cooler.
In reply to dean1484 :
I just have trouble paying the better part of $1000 for a plastic end tank radiator that would be $300 for any other car! Feel like if I'm spending that kind of moolah I should get a core upgrade or to ditch the plastic.
All good points....
Now to rub it in slightly......I buy Chineseum aluminum radiators off of Ebay for classic Minis, I've paid as little as $50 shipped for them. The one in my daily has been in there 8 years and works a treat. Last summer I drove it to South Dakota and Wyoming for a Mini meet, temps were in the mid 90's and we ran pretty hard all week. Never had any overheating issues with any of them.
Point being, are there sources like that available to you, or is the market just too small?
For the money of the two you linked, could you just have a custom radiator made?
I follow you on the "all in one" setup, I used to think that if a company offered a product like that, that it would have been tested thoroughly and work properly......
+1 for CSF with stock-style fan assembly. A lot of my racing buddies had good results with Chinesium radiators, but when I bought one it had leaks because the threaded mounting bosses had been drilled clean through into the tanks! Ended up costing almost as much as a CSF once it was fixed. wvumtnbkr told me he got one from the same manufacturer (GPIRacing) that didn't fit because it was a parallelogram instead of a rectangle!
Edit: I sent this video to show the company the problem, never heard back:
Porsche tax is real. What I am saying it the oe lasted that long with no issues even at that price it is worth it. Who cares if the tanks are plastic. If it is designed and built correctly they work fine. The hundreds of millions of them on the road today prove it.
I have had so many 944/951 that I don't remember and a rad failure is something I don't ever remember having. I don't think any one has come to me about one. (I own Clark's Garage). I have a factory original radiator in my 924s that went 350k miles and is still in there. Today. I wore out the chassis of the car before the rad.
As for fans. I would be hard pressed to not replace them with stock. I went down the road of trying replacement/aftermarket fans and non fit and work as well as oe.
Where you can make improvements is to direct wire the fans with 20amp breakers and relays and heavy gage wire and then use the original power wires as the trigger of the relays. If you are familiar with the headlight mod this is similar just using heavier duty wiring relays and breakers. If you do this use good automotive grade wire at least two gauge lower than the factory wire.
One mod I did was to take the fender vents from a 79 Z28 and put them in to the hood over the exhaust side of the motor. They match the contour of the hood almost perfectly. We used temp probes with data logging and it helped a bit. More on the cooldown. I really did not see any major difference while on track. But it did look cool!!! lol.
EDIT. I have wondered if having plastic tanks the manufacturers have created a failure point on purpose. It is way better for a rad to fail than a head gasket or have a seal failure leading to coolant being ingested by the motor. Put the weakest point in the cooling system on the rad to protect the motor. No clue if this is true. I would believe that it is a happy accident and not a design feature. Are there some really poorly made plastic tanked rads? Absolutely. Look no further than BMW. Or 80s GM. But there are so many out there working just fine it really is a non issue at this point.
In reply to dean1484 :
Oh I am definitely keeping the stock fan setup and just replacing the fans in the shroud assembly. Mine are not sounding good at all but of all the aftermarket setups available for aux fans, nobody has found one yet that works as well as stock. I will look into the fan rewiring, that sounds like a wise idea.
Re: the plastic end tank radiators, as far as I know the Porsche OEM was actually the same as the BMWs (Mahle/Behr), BMW just likes to run a much higher cooling system pressure which can cause them to go boom if the system isn't in perfect shape.
But another reason I am considering aftermarket is because it sounds like the latest batch of Porsche rads is from a new supplier, and they are using a thinner core and not made as well as the OE Mahle/Behr parts from the 90's...
https://rennlist.com/forums/968-forum/1427015-why-does-oem-replacement-radiator-have-a-narrower-core-thickness.html
Keep in mind the coolant expansion tank is also made of plastic, in addition to the chintzy heater valve, so I would think that those would be failure points before the radiator.
MiniDave said:
All good points....
Now to rub it in slightly......I buy Chineseum aluminum radiators off of Ebay for classic Minis, I've paid as little as $50 shipped for them. The one in my daily has been in there 8 years and works a treat. Last summer I drove it to South Dakota and Wyoming for a Mini meet, temps were in the mid 90's and we ran pretty hard all week. Never had any overheating issues with any of them.
Point being, are there sources like that available to you, or is the market just too small?
For the money of the two you linked, could you just have a custom radiator made?
I follow you on the "all in one" setup, I used to think that if a company offered a product like that, that it would have been tested thoroughly and work properly......
The Chinesium aluminum radiators for the 944/968 are known to be garbage that are shaped like parallelograms if they don't leak right out of the box and a 968 motor is expensive enough that I don't want to gamble with a cheap part anyway.
Anyway, see, this is the point of my whole question: the Wizard Cooling rad is basically what I would get if I paid for a full custom radiator so I'm wondering if anyone has dealt with them as a vendor before 
Wizard seems to get high marks from BMW M5/M6 folks so I am probably going to take the plunge.
