Radiator woes

[AdamR]

I think the problem is the economies of the thing. A twin pass alloy radiator, made in the UK for £140? There will always be shortcuts somewhere and quality will suffer. Just hope mine holds up 😆 

 

Have mounted mine on bobbins too.

[Maurici- CleaR Motorsport]

7 minutes ago, AdamR said:

I think the problem is the economies of the thing. A twin pass alloy radiator, made in the UK for £140? There will always be shortcuts somewhere and quality will suffer. Just hope mine holds up 😆 

 

Have mounted mine on bobbins too.

 

Exactly. It is SOOOOO cheap for the ammount of process involved. BUT, mines holds, so far...

[Ian Kinder (Bagpuss) - Joint Peak District AO]

16 hours ago, RoyH said:

Ian - I'm on my third Coolex rad they have been very good and exchanged the previous two.  I thought this third one was Ok but a couple months ago I saw the dreaded 'pink' stain from on the core. It must be very small amount being lost because I can't notice any significant loss in the header tank. I did Blyton this year and didn't suffer from over heating or a worsening of the leak. Like you I'm completely baffled I've use bobbins, hard mounted and now have rubber tap washer between the rad and the mounts. I've also reduced the concentration of anti freeze from 50% ( as suggested by the suppler) to 25% on the last rad and it still started weeping.  ATB Roy

@RoyH did you discuss with @Trevturtle at Blyton recently?

 

I wouldn't have used 50%! That's rather strong for UK weather!

 

[RoyH]

Yes we had a chat and he said you had been having similar problems. It just seems strange that a couple of us are having multiple failures while others are having none.

We can't be that unlucky - can we.

[jeff oakley]

I used to work for Serck Marston many years ago when Alloy first became common in use for rads. We had a lot of failures on alloy heater matrix and it took some time to get to the bottom of the issue.

 

A lot were caused by corrosive materials in the engine cooling system. Say you had your block chemically cleaned, if there was any residue in the waterways that could eat away the core. Similar ones were rad flush being used and leaving residue. We issued new instructions and the cores were made a bit thicker.

 

It is unlikely that this is the cause in three identical ones but I always remember that and when ever I remove a rad I always back flush the system a couple of times and if using a doner engine you never know what has been in there in the past.

 

When refilling always use the exact amount of antifreeze of good quality for the volume of water and change it regularly. to ensure it is all ways the right mix. Remember things are cheap for a reason and sometimes you get what you pay for.

 

I am not associated with Sercks anymore but we made alloy F1 rads then for a lot of teams so they do quality. They are now called Serck Motorsport in Hayes.