Ahhhh he||!

Torque Junkie · November 5, 2001

My thermostat has been acting funny.... Sticking clsoed until the temp gets into the red area of hot and then finally opening and then sticking open and overcooling. It's been doing this for about a week or 2 now.

Anyways, I head into town to meet up with my girlfriend for lunch, and I notice a little steam coming from under the hood, and I don't think anything of it becuase it did the 'temporary overheat' thing just before, so after I take Dawn back to work I head to NAPA to get a new thermostat and it's steaming really bad now

So when I get home to change the thermo I notice it's spitting a little out of the front of the radiator. The radiator now has a small hole in the front of it, leaking coolant under pressure. After letting it cool down I pull the shroud off and look at it and it's not something I can easily repair, and looking at it it doesn't look in the best shape as it is.

GRRRRRR :angry:

Next project: Radiator swap! Now would probably be a good time to do an electric fan conversion as well, but I'm still debating on that investment as of now.

-Mike

76BBSub · November 5, 2001

The good news (if there is any) is that a radiator for our trucks is pretty cheap...I bought a brand new four-core for the Suburban for about $160 from Car Quest. Takes about 15 minutes to install, so that's not bad either. Of course, there are other things we'd rather spend money on, but at least it's not $400 or something.

I would try it with just the stock fan. If you were having any overheating problems before the new radiator should take care of that, and the HP loss to the fan doesn't really justify the expense of an electric setup in my opinion, although I am considering electrics for the Corvette.

Jeff

Ken73 · November 5, 2001

Mike, if it's any consolence, I rebuilt the radiator in my stepson's '74 Vette. It DID have a four core radiator, but the bottom 1/4 of the passenger side tank was full of MUD (yes, MUD!) He was having overheating problems, to say the least. I pulled the tanks off with a plumbers brazing torch (takes time and patience) and cleaned all of the tubes up, then ran some JB Weld all around each tube to not only prevent leaks, but help give the tubes a little "crush protection" as well. Once it was all cleaned up, I brazed the tanks back on, and made a make-shift radiator testing tank. (Just a tarp with some sides put up.) Got a bicycle tube and cut it opposite the inlet valve, and put the two ends on the radiator outlets. Put the radiator cap and drain plug on, and pressurized it with an air compressor. This showed me where all the leaks were, and I was able to plug them all.

Now his car warms up to the 160 degrees of the thermostat we bought, and that's it! We can't get it to heat up any more than that.

Now, having said all that, if you can get a 4-core for $160, I'd do that in a heartbeat!

Ken

Torque Junkie · November 5, 2001

Quote from 76BBSub, posted on Nov. 05 2001,09:11

The good news (if there is any) is that a radiator for our trucks is pretty cheap...I bought a brand new four-core for the Suburban for about $160 from Car Quest. Takes about 15 minutes to install, so that's not bad either. Of course, there are other things we'd rather spend money on, but at least it's not $400 or something.
I would try it with just the stock fan. If you were having any overheating problems before the new radiator should take care of that, and the HP loss to the fan doesn't really justify the expense of an electric setup in my opinion, although I am considering electrics for the Corvette.

Jeff

Yeah.... I'm glad it' snot an expensive part and it's an easy job.

Napa quoted me $170 and Summit Racing has one for $154, but I'm not sure if either one 4-core or not.

Car Quest up here quoted me $200.

Checker quoted me $168 for a 3-core and he can have it tomorrow. That's only $8 more than Summit and I don't have to wait a week to get it, so I'm gonna go with that one.

What a pain. The more stuff like this that pops up the longer it's gonna take to get my 700R4 tranny swap done