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Aluminum replacement radiator

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peteatgr

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Anyone have any experience with the aluminum replacement radiator from Wizard Cooling for $499. Their advert says it's fully aluminum and it has 2 rows of 1" tubes.

My '67 BJ8 is now running around 200 degrees fairly quickly, and can get up to 212 at stop lights, and it doesn't really seem to want to come back down much even at consistent highweay speed once it's hot. I've given it a new 6 bladed flex fan, a new water pump, new hoses, and a new summer thermostat and a couple of good vinegar flushes. It still has the original 46 year old radiator with no major work on it on my part since I bought the car in '74 with the exception of the occassional flush.

I think it may be time for some "structural" help. Do I re-core the origianl or start over new? If I re-core, any advice on tube size and pattern, or who supplies an apprtopriate new core?

Other then the temp she seems to be running very nicely, but obviously doesn't really like being this hot.
 
I think it may be time for some "structural" help. Do I re-core the origianl ;

I would re-core the origina with a shop like Healey Surgeons.

Much cheaper and Copper has a higher thermal conductivity than Aluminum.

Additionally you might want to consider using a Hayden six bladed fan.
 
I've posted a lot about my experiences with overheating and recoring my radiator. In short, I did all the things you did, but didn't solve my problem until I recored my radiator (at a local standard radiator shop) with a new core that had 14 fins per inch rather than the stock 11 (I think). It has the stock 3 rows of tubes. This was an in-stock core, not custom made. About a third of the old core tubes were plugged with sludge. The sure sign of a plugged core is when the temp goes up on the highway. Go to a local shop and see what they know. My recore cost about $250. Just make sure you diagram how the top and bottom tanks connect to the core. My shop put them on backwards. The top overhang is opposite of most other cars.
 
Thank you gents. I'm off to further investigate re-coring.
 
Hi Pete,

I too am chasing heating issues with my BJ8. I'm running with a Texas Cooler fan, 160F thermostat, rebuilt pump, recored 3 row radiator, cleaned out block, etc. I run at 160-170F on an 80F day but when at a stop sign it will crawl up to 190F or more. In the garage, it will go up pretty quickly to 220F if I don't watch it. I have been working on the specifics of the issue, doing research on the coolant flows, air flow, etc. So far I've found out:

1) The pump impeller is a 4 vane unit, straight vaned. Newer designs have 6 to 8 curved vanes. This helps with higher flows at lower rpms. I think we could benefit with a substitution of a more efficient design, and I'm investigating using a BMW impeller, machined to fit our pump casing. But I am a ways off from confirming its effect as I just picked up the pump and want to try #2 below before I go back into the pump.

I also found out my pump impeller was restricted in two ways: The discharge groove cast in the block for the impeller to discharge the water is set further back into the block by about 0.100 than it should be (casting shift?). So the impeller's full area was blocked partially. This wasn't too bad a restriction, however, the reproduction pump impeller had a discharge area only 60% of an original. These two imperfections caused a major restriction to the pumps output. I did two things to correct it: one, machined the pump casing so it sit deeper into the block, and replaced the impeller with an OEM one. Now the flow seems more adequate. You may be suffering from either or both of these restrictions?
2) The flow in the radiator, from talking with an expert, and from doing the flow calculations, seems fairly low. One web site states that the tube velocity should be in the 7 to 8 ft/sec range. Ours, if my radiator is consistant with most at 3 rows of 33 tubes, .080 x .450 tube dimension, is between 0.63fps at idle and 3.15fps at full chat. So about 1/3 what it should be for proper heat transfer in the radiator. Newer radiators have thinner tubes that are closer together and have higher density fin count that have louvers in them to promote air turbulance. One web site: https://www.coolcraft.com/radiator-core-styles#TF, suggests a 3 pass radiator to further enhance the cooling capacity of the radiator while increasing the turbulance in the tubes. I hope to put in baffles to make mine a 3 pass radiator and see if that helps.
3) The above website also addresses brass/copper versus aluminum radiator construction. Briefly said, due to construction compromises the difference in cooling ability are almost equal with the edge going to brass/copper.

I'm not sure this helps or further confuses things but if recoring, my current opinion is to get one with a denser fin count with louvers, 4 rows of about the same number of tubes per row, and thinner tubes.
 
Longtime Healey enthusiast, Leonard Thomas of Atlanta, recently had aluminum Rads custom made to fit big Healeys.
They are a work of art but I know nothing of their design or function. Only know the fit of the one I saw was perfect.
I am sure a google search would find him if you need info.
 
try rerouting not going through the heater core I did it and have no heating issues at all ,maybe its clogged
 
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