Hi all,
I am at the point of purchasing a new radiator for 1968 FHC. I’m considering one of the aluminum radiators. However, looking at all the known suppliers I noticed a large difference in price even when the radiators seem identical. Please share your experience with purchasing from the usual suppliers and the quality of the product. In particular I was looking at the radiator from Cool Cat and Moss. Although the radiators look almost identical, the price difference is significant. Your comments are appreciated.
Thanks.
Very happy coolcat customer. '68 as well.
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Ron Davis supplies radiators to Moss. I’ll be going with CoolCat if a bigger fan doesn’t solve the airflow issue with the old four row copper + AC condenser. Both are two row with wide tubes.
Big Coolcat fan here! After ordering, the CC radiator quickly arrived, and no fault of CC, huge dent. Contacted Mike and he sent a replacement right out, as I had a hard to get appt with shop to put it in already set. Repl. arrived in time, a beauty. Truly plug and play. Also opted to buy the CC replacement fans. I have bought other things from CC, all well thought out and engineered. I also like the idea of supporting a small business, one who truly supports e types with QUALITY products!
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You might want to go through this topic before you pull the trigger.
How can this be so cheap? Radiator - E-Type - Jag-lovers Forums
+1 for Cool Cat
In my case, the radiator is for a Series III manual trans.
Sparkly photos attached
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and dressed up with rebuilt fan motors and relays, new wiring, and renewed fan housing just waiting to be installed
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Your fan blades appear buried in the shroud. You want to have NO fan blade in front of the cylindrical part of the shroud. Best to make sure you have the front part of the blade at least 1/8" back from the leading edge of the tubular part. You want to make sure the blade is not making turbulence in the area between the core and the shroud. The goal of a fan is to pull air thru the radiator and the air in the front comes in to fill the area between the core and the shroud. The rear of the fan blade can throw more air OUT than rearward.
Typically on an S3, you want the motors moved back a lot. If you want to optimize you can experiment with the maximum amount of weight you can hang on cardstock sucked onto the front of the core.
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Thanx Greg - I’ll check the depth on my fans.
Although
the second photo shows the blades to be proud of the shroud by about 1/4" - 1/2".
I simply reused the original spacers on the fan motor mounts.
Still – its worth a look
Thanx
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The picture might be fooling me. The rear motor in the last picture looks correct on the blade closest to the camera so maybe the others look deeper because of the angle of the picture. The brackets clamp the round motors and let you adjust the position in and out. We spent a lot of time optimizing these when we were learning how to improve cooling in the 1970s.
Hi GregB,
I am a bit confused by your comments regarding the depth/position of the cooling fan in relation to the cylindrical flange on the fan shroud. I don’t understand if you are saying that the fan should be all the way in with only 1/8" sticking out the back, or if it should be 1/8" back from the leading edge of the circular flange.
I always thought that for maximum efficiency, the rear edge of the fan blade (closest to the fan motor) should be flush with the rear leading edge of the cylindrical flange. So as to pull air through the shroud, and not from outside the shroud. Am I reading this wrong?
The goal for cooling is moving air thru the radiator. E-types and most early Jaguars have most of their cooling problems at low speed. In order to get air in the front of the radiator, you create a low pressure area behind the radiator. Fans pull air out of the space between the radiator core and the fan shroud by shoving air out the back.
The big problem that people don’t understand is that any fan blade protruding into the shroud will move air around INSIDE the shroud. This interrupts smooth flow out the back. So you want to make sure that NO fan blade has any blade inside the shroud. Moving air sideways inside the shroud is the enemy of smooth airflow.
I make sure that the front of the blade is at least 1/8" behind the front of the cylindrical portion of the fan shroud. Moving it further back will get you more airflow because with more of the blade behind the shroud, you can pull more air as the blade can throw more air when half of it is behind the cylindrical part of the shroud.
On an ES3, we got max cooling with less than half the blade in the cylindrical portion of the shroud, and more than half behind that. Most people aren’t comfortable with that.
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Thanks Greg. I think I understand now.
You are saying that the fan blade should not protrude at all into the space created between the radiator core and the shroud. Got it.
Thanks again,
Bill.
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