Keeping Your COOL
by Don Caithness
Have you ever wanted to participate in an event like the Woodward Ave Dream Cruise but the thought of being stuck in stop and go traffic for a few hours on a hot August afternoon starts your temperature boiling? Nothing quickly takes the fun out of cruising than having your eyes glued to an ever rising temperature gauge and waiting for the inevitable. A hot spray of glycol on a finely detailed engine compartment just isn’t my idea of a fun time. When the temperature gauge pegs the 260 mark you better have an escape route before the steam starts to impair your view. So rather than telling all your buddies of the great time you had, you’ve got the scorch marks on your right hand to show them. So do you just give up and park your ride forever or can you prevent this turn of events from happening in the first place?
If you are the kind of person who can appreciate fine craftsmanship then the welding job on the Alumitech Radiator will impress.Of course there are a few things you can to do to ensure your cooling system is operating at peak efficiency. An annual cooling system flush to remove any loose scale and rust deposits and maintaining a 50/50 anti-freeze mix is the start. Running a stock fan shroud and perhaps the fan blade/clutch from the heavy-duty cooling option for your car. Installing an external transmission cooler will take some of the load of the radiator.
Back when the muscle car era began, copper was the material of choice for radiators. Strong and heavy, it would last for years with only minimal maintenance. Today aluminum radiators with plastic tanks are the norm in almost every newer vehicle, light and much more efficient at dissipating heat than copper.
If your running a modified vehicle then dual electric fans and a performance radiator may be the answer but what if you are running a stock, show prepared muscle car. Electric fans are out and most of the aftermarket aluminum radiators won’t even come close to resembling a stock radiator. What if you could find a concours correct, 4-core aluminum radiator that would drop your temperature by 10-20 or even 40 degrees? Fortunately there is such a product and it comes from a small company called Alumitech Reproductions. Other than the Harrison script being absent from the side tank, it’s a dead ringer for the original GM radiators. If you were to paint the radiator black, I doubt anyone would ever see or know any different.
The Alumitech radiator was a direct fit for our application and installed using all the original fittings, saddle mounts and stock plastic fan shroud. It’s not often you’ll find a performance radiator that is a direct replacement for the original.
Without getting into the technical stuff we know aluminum radiators do a better job of dissipating heat than copper, but by how much? The charts at the end of the article will show the “real life” comparison numbers. The test vehicle has a mild 396, 2.73 rear axle ratio, automatic transmission with a separate plate and fin cooler, newer 4 core copper radiator, 7 blade steel fan with a full shroud, 160 degree high flow thermostat and an Edelbrock water pump. Pretty much the standard stuff.
This vehicle came from the factory with a small block so things are a little tighter than normal, well actually a lot tighter in some areas. The temperature sensor is mounted in the LH cylinder head and the readings where taken using a digital gauge.
To sum up the results the temperature remained constant at highway speed where before the faster you drove the higher the temperature. When you did get caught in heavy stop and go traffic the temperature would slowly rise by 20-25 degrees and stabilized around the 200 degree mark, yet as soon as the RPM came up off idle and you started to move it very quickly dropped back down again. With the copper radiator in the same situation the temperature would quickly move past the 220 mark then continued to slowly inch higher and was much slower to cool off once you got moving again.
So as they say, “You can’t have your cake and eat it to” Proverbs can be “oh so wrong” as in this case, original factory styling and aftermarket cooling capacity all in the same radiator.
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