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MGB Fair price for an MGB radiator re-core?

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a heater core is nothing more than a miniture radiator.... I use salvaged heater cores as radiators for my PC... /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

There's a point of diminishing returns, but if you add more rows to a given volume (radiators are 3 diminsional) Then the cooling fluid is allowed to spend more time in the cooling in the radiator. With more tubes you can do 1 of two things, 1) flow more water at the same flow speed, or 2) flow the same amount of water at a slower speed. The longer the water spends in the radiator the cooler it'll be.... in theory anyways. The point of diminishing returns is where you have so many rows that you don't have sufficient room for the cooling fins to do their job efficiently.

Thats my understanding of this sort of stuff. If I'm way off base here someone please correct me. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
You're THERE dude. "Heat exchange" is all it is. More fins=more surface area, that's what does the exchange. You can have too much "flow" (read: rate of flow) to exchange well, but genereally it should all work well with what was OEM. It ain't gonna hurt to increase the row of tubes by one "course" nor cause a problem with more fins.

An interesting tidbit: A 30% blockage in most any exchange system will result in an 80% decrease in efficiency.

---just another of Dr Entropy's useless pieces of information. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
 
Some recent"trade"prices on radiators. This is a guy that I have used for 20 plus years. Both of these are for as heavy duty cores as the man can find. This means the most tubes that fit, the highest count fins per inch, and louvered fins. Ford Anglia 225.00, and Jag XJS V12 400.00 The XJS cores are custom made to spec in Canada, so you pay a little more to have them shipped.
 
Had a hot rod lincoln engine long long ago, had to cut the water pump down to slow the water going through the radiator down so it had time to cool. Some guy with a dirt track car showed me that. Also had 104 louvers in the hood. Wheeeeeee.

Another one I wish I still had.
 
Nice work on the energy explaination - no wonder they call you Dr. Entropy! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
 
Scott - A good quality 4 row L type core, installed will probably run around $300, but once done, you will have an original radiator that works the way it should. When the shop said they could not get a row core for you, they were either blowing smoke or don't know where to go. The cores are available from a company called Presiage (used to be known as Modine) and they make all of hte OE cores available. I got one pum in or MGB several years ago and have not had a bit of difficulty with overheating since.
Good luck
 
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