So went shopping at the local salvage yard today to find a replacement radiator for the Safari. The original is pretty punky. I'm bypassing the trans cooler by using an auxiliary one so I wanted to find a rad from a manual trans vehicle. Would the capacity be okay if I used the radiator from an S10 2.8 v6? It's in cherry condition and would only cost me $40. It's all metal from a square body 2 door. I intend to run electric fan(s) instead of the belt driven one if that matters. What say you?
The key is the number of rows. A slightly smaller three or four core will provide much better cooling than a rad that is a little bigger but is only a one or two core.
dean1484 wrote: The key is the number of rows. A slightly smaller three or four core will provide much better cooling than a rad that is a little bigger but is only a one or two core.
Not necessarily. Worry more about core thickness than number of rows, especially with aluminum rads. With aluminum cores, a row can be wider than it can on a copper/brass rad. For example, a 2" thick copper/brass will typically be a 4 row rad, but would only be a 2 row aluminum.
That is interesting I did not know that. Why are the alu core rows thicker?
It's 1.25 wide core. It's about 17 inches tall and including the tanks 19 inches width. Tanks on either end about 1.5 inches.
Thinking about it more I can only assume that the engineers figured out and optimized the tube size and flow to surface area and heat dissipation. Actually slowing the flow through less cores would take less air flow and with modern cars having alot of the nose closed up and instead they are pulling the air up from behind the bumper.
I also bet manufacturing cost came in to play. A two core unit is cheaper to make than a four core unit.
Answer to dean: From having researched this a bit recently, aluminum tubes can be more readily shaped into longer cross sections than copper/brass. The race radiator guys seem standardized on 1.25" AL tubes. So a 2 row aluminum from a quality shop is similar to a 4 row copper in thickness and cooling capacity.
To the OP: did the 2.8L S10 use the same rad as the 4.3? If so, it should be adequate, as IIRC the V8 S10 guys use their OE rads. I had a 4.3 rad in my V8 Corvair and it was barely adequate, but I don't know the internal condition of the water pump that was on that engine.
AngryCorvair wrote: To the OP: did the 2.8L S10 use the same rad as the 4.3? If so, it should be adequate, as IIRC the V8 S10 guys use their OE rads. I had a 4.3 rad in my V8 Corvair and it was barely adequate, but I don't know the internal condition of the water pump that was on that engine.
Hmmm, unsure. I think that the 4.3 used the newer aluminum with plastic tank style as on my van. Their very similar in size. What's the worst that could happen?
Factory rads use a higher fin density than aftermarket, usually. This means they don't need to be as thick for the same amount of heat transfer. I much prefer a thin, efficient core over one that's just big and fat. A lot of aftermarket manufacturers go for lots of cores because it's easy to sell them on that one simple number instead of the science.
Factory rads for automatics will likely be higher capacity than manuals, as they also have to cool the trans fluid. Also, look for vehicles with a towing package.
Don't forget the fan needs to be adequate. Part of the reason most 1uz swaps will cool fine driving, but heat up in traffic.
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