Radiator cap on champion aluminum rad.

[mjs2011]

I recently had contamination issues with my HIH wvo lines where they came apart and wvo and coolant were mixing. Long story short, I got coolant in the wvo tank and wvo in the rad. That issue has since been fixed. But it brings me to the point of this post. We took the rad out and were doing flushes and decided to take it to the shop in town to be boiled/rodded. In the process, it sprung a leak. So I opted to get a new radiator. I purchases a 3 row aluminum from Champion radiators. It cost me 290 shipped. I must say that the build quality seems impressive. So far I have but one complaint. The cap that was included with the rad says 1.1. I seem to recall from another thread that that means 1.1 bar, which equates to about 16 psi. Now my old radiator cap was 13 psi, but we didn't think much of it. That is until I noticed a water leak. It is dripping right off the pulleys in the front of the engine, so we think it is the water pump seal. Now I am inclined to think that this is the radiator cap causing this, since it would leak only when the system got hot, thus pressured up, and if you were to open the cap and relieve pressure, the leaking would slow down substantially. However, it still leaked under 13 psi too, so now I am going to be installing a new water pump.

Just a heads up, especially with older vehicles and neglected cooling systems, be aware of the radiator cap that you are using, as a sudden spike in pressure could cause headaches.

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[chris142]

Ya ditch that pos cap anyway. Often just new coolant will cause a weak pump to leak or you flushed whatever was holding it together out.

 

[mjs2011]

Yeah I suppose it was a combination of those things. Several water flushes and I think dad did a simple green flush too to get the oil out. I hope that the simple green isn't going to cause more issues with other internals down the road.

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[OLDBULL8]

Simple Green ain't much stronger than Dawn if at all. Lots of Dawn has been used to flush out oil. If the rad shop rodded your rad, then they caused the leak on your original, never ever rod out a Ford OEM radiator, the tubes are crimped to slow the coolant circulation. It's a given fact that many rad's have been ruined by unknowing shops.

 

[icanfixall]

Rodding a dimple core radiater is never really going to clean it. Just no way to clean out the dimples. Not all radiaters are dimpled too. The idea of the dimples was to slow down the fall of the coolant thru the raditers hoping for more time to transfer heat.. Sure as hell didn't work like that.. Running 13 lbs is all we need and if you run Evans Waterless collant you don't use a pressure cap. Its a zero pressure system cause it will not boil till some ungodly high temp like 350 or something like that. Sorry but I'm not going that far in the temp excursions.

 

[Wicked97]

Dawn sucks to clean a cooling system.
Use powdered calgon or some other automatic dishwasher soap.
It doesn't foam and cuts grease as well as dish soap.

 

[chris142]

Simple green wont hurt anything. My oe rad was not dimpled. 20 yrs ago we could buy special rods with a brush on it that would clean the dimpled tubes. I have not seen one in years now

 

[smolkin]

Unless you have the tools handy and want to do it yourself, there's almost no point in cleaning out a 20+yr-old OEM radiator. The local shops here wanted $150 just to clean mine, and I got my Champion for $220, minus the $70 scrap for old copper one, so a net cost of $150. I'm not the best at math but that's kind of a no-brainer. A 13-psi cap was an additional $7. Just my 15,700 cents.

My only complaint so far with the Champion is the trans cooler fittings, which are aluminum-on-aluminum compression and have been oozing a bit; that could be my fault, since I'm not sure how much torque I can put on them before I twist them off. Put a few more beans to them last night, and they seem to finally have stopped leaking fingers crossed.

 

[mjs2011]

Unless you have the tools handy and want to do it yourself, there's almost no point in cleaning out a 20+yr-old OEM radiator. The local shops here wanted $150 just to clean mine, and I got my Champion for $220, minus the $70 scrap for old copper one, so a net cost of $150. I'm not the best at math but that's kind of a no-brainer. A 13-psi cap was an additional $7. Just my 15,700 cents.

70 bucks in scrap? Wow, where did you get that from?


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[smolkin]

70 bucks in scrap? Wow, where did you get that from?

That's what they gave me last week at the "ghetto" scrapper that is nearby my maint. shop at work; 44lbs @ $1.55/lb. The one downtown has even better prices but it was more out of the way. Make sure they know it's all copper and you can get a better price than the scrap radiator rate, which probably factors in plastic tanks or something.

 

[jrad235]

I really have to get that thing in to the scrapper! I tossed the cap that came with the radiator and used my new/old Stant although the guys I bought the radiator from threw in a 7lb cap for free, said there was little to no reason not to run it and everything would last longer under less pressure, which I agree with. I just figured I would wait until I was driving around town to test it, instead of across the desert.

 

[riotwarrior]

I'm not sure if this will work with our rads, mine is a Champion as well, however I'm going to give it a whirl for sure!

I"m liking the idea of knowing how hot hot is!
http://mr-gasket.com/cooling-system/radiator-caps/domestic-thermocap-13-psi-blue.html

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I am not usually a blingy guy...really I'm not but with that champion rad and this cap...gotta say ...

VA Va va Vooooom! Baby!

JM2CW

Oh to the OP, ya been there done that with cooling system flushes, and bad water pumps and rads it happened to me too, thus I feel yer pain.

There is a tech article on wp replacement!

Al

 

[typ4]

To the OP, change the water pump before it leaves you on a big hill in montana , or wherever, with a camper on and the temp gauge doing a ballet between 200 and 250.
On that note, the camper will ALWAYS have at least 10 gallons of water in its tank.

 

[mjs2011]

To the OP, change the water pump before it leaves you on a big hill in montana , or wherever, with a camper on and the temp gauge doing a ballet between 200 and 250.
On that note, the camper will ALWAYS have at least 10 gallons of water in its tank.

I take it this happened to you?

But yes I plan on getting the water pump replaced. It's just a ****** deal since I live 250 miles from home (college student now) and I was home this weekend expecting to bring my pickup back when this happened. Now I've gotta wait yet again, until I can get home and get this done.

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[NO_SPRK]

i dont think anyone wants to do a water pump on the side of the road... on the other hand i have no issues changing a IP on the side of the road.


change the water pump when your home.. too many bolts and stuff to seal up.