By now, I hope you understand what it takes to cool your car. With an aluminum radiator, you’re going to want to use a 2-row with 1.0” tubes. And avoid 3-row aluminum radiators (and super-gimmick 4-row aluminum radiators) like the plague. You’re also going to want to avoid gimmick fans. Even with a good 2-row aluminum radiator, a gimmick fan …
How To Avoid The Wimpy Electric Fan Gimmick
In our final post series on giving you a crash course in cooling systems, we’re going to discuss the final piece of your cooling system. Electric cooling fans. Before we do that, let’s briefly review what we’ve learned in our previous posts. We learned in our previous posts that the real reason why aluminum radiators work better is because aluminum …
Three Row Snake Oil: The Gift The Keeps On Giving – Giving You Grief.
Let’s review what we’ve learned in the previous posts. We learned that there are many old wives tales about aluminum radiators, most of which are not true. Then we learned that aluminum is lighter and stronger than copper/brass. As hot rodders, we exploit this lighter and stronger aspect of aluminum to build aluminum radiators that cool significantly better than their …
Falling For The Three Row Gimmick
In our last post, we covered copper brass radiators and compared them with aluminum. We left off by comparing the thermal conductivity of aluminum with copper/brass. Copper/brass has almost twice the thermal conductivity of aluminum. Yet, aluminum radiators can transfer a lot more heat than their copper/brass counterparts and keep your engine running a lot cooler. So how in the …
Copper Brass Radiators Versus Aluminum Radiators
Back in the day, if you needed a new radiator for your hot rod, your buddy probably said: “Just get yourself a good 4-row” Before aluminum radiators were around, the only upgrade from a factory 3-row radiator was either a 3-row high efficiency model or a 4-row. A 4-row added another row of cooling tubes which provided approximately an extra …
