Hey all, In my never ending quest to try different things, my wife says in wasting money, I,m off on another venture, I spent time getting the cooling system in my rig dialed in and working great, actually it runs on the cold side, but decided it needed a little shine so here goes, bought an all aluminum radiator, gotta build some new mounts to fit it in but thats no biggie, I already dumped the clutch fan setup in favor of the rigid fan and have no regrets, but hesitant on how well the aluminum rad will cool compared to the 3 row I had in it, guess we'll find out. Anybody running the aluminum, I know there are some of you, any comments?, pros?, cons?, good?, bad?.
Nothing else it'll save a few pounds, and its shiny

 

the shop that is going to build my rad for my wagon said that aluminum will transfer heat at twice the rate of copper.



how loud is the flex fan?


i locked up a stock fan for my wheeler and it now sounds like a mid 80's 350.

 

Ive got an aluminum radiator on my Eclipse & Im planning to install one in the truck as well too...great part to have!! Its made a big difference in my Eclipse
& Im sure it will on the truck too! Oh your setup looks sic!!

 

I run a custom made Griffin unit. First one got a leak?? Think was damaged when polished( small dent @ bottom). They replaced it!& polished it! Will cool far better than others. Griffins are 3rows, & all welded! BeCool radiators are a good choice( made by Griffin),if you can find a unit to fit! Use the right coolant & only distilled water,a must!!
Hope this is some help!

 

Thanks guys, I had read the aluminums will cool a lot better compared to the same size in brass/copper construction, we'll see how it works out. I have ran the Toyota brand red antifreeze for several years with no issues, other than price, mixed with distilled water, also have numerous ground cables under the hood and will also ground the rad once installed just to be cautious.
Nuff, the flex fan isn't too bad noise wise, you can tell its there but not quite as bad as the locked clutch I had tried, at least on my setup, I just didn't like the idea of the locked clutch setup, considerably more dead weight spinning out there than the flex unit.
OK, back to the garage, working on my rad mounts.

 

i put a rigid race fan (no flex at all) on my s-10, it's loud, didn't affect the milage, and on those 115 degree plus arizona summer days, it runs 160 degrees. i love it.

 

bling

hey Nook is that radiator one of those $150 from ebay? If so Is it decent? SSB

 

. . . I like the look of that combo. After reading past posts and getting feedback from LC engineering on the fan kit, I ordered one, so we'll see . . .

 

Hey SSB, Yeah its one of the Ebay specials, actually I was a bit leery of it but after getting it was very pleased with the construction, my main reason for buying this particular one was the fact the side mounts are bolted on as opposed to welded like all the others I inquired about, that way I was able to remove them and build my own to fit my 75 truck.
Another note was it was advertised as a 2 row core but in fact its actually a single row of about 1-1/4" tubing.
I emailed the seller and they promptly said the early ones they sold were 2 row but had troubles because of the smaller tube size with blockage so they went to the larger single tube, they said it proved to cure the problems and also cooled better than the 2 row unit, which kinda agrees with a lot of what I read about the aluminum units, They also told me it had a lifetime warranty, except for collision, and if I had any problems to let them know and they would replace it. Sent name, addy, and phone numbers for contact which a lot of the ebay sellers would never do so I have no complaints about their service and figure what the Hey!! I'll give it a shot.

 

bling

Thanks Nook, I've been watching them also. I was like you worried about the quality for the litttle$. I think I will grab one up my self. What are nyou using for a sroud ? Thanks SSB

 

The radiator like I got is made to fit the 84-88 trucks, so the stock plastic shroud for those years will bolt right on.
In my case I,m using the stock 75 metal shroud, will work with the new rad mounts I,m building.
My biggest problem was frontal clearance with the supercharger, AC, power steering, got lots of belts and pulleys down there to work around, if you notice the picture I posted I split the shroud in half, fabbed up a couple threaded tabs, now I can bolt the bottom half in place, mount the fan, spacers, all the junk needed, then drop the top half in and bolt them together, sure makes things a whole lot easier to work on that way.

 

I run the ebay special radiator. I think its great for the price. I will be the first to say that its not pretty and polished with perfect welds like a LCE, Koyo, Griffin etc.. but it does fit correctly and weighs much less then stock.

I smoothed out the welds on top with a couple pneumatic powered scotchbrite pads and painted the tanks but it was pretty fugly out of the box.

I think the truck runs cooler with it... it definitely takes longer for the truck to warm up from a cold start now. It seems to flow much more air too. I have a flex-a-lite black magic fan that was on the stock radiator and it is 10x quieter with the new radiator. It seems to cool down faster as well.

 

Aluminum ALL THE WAY!

My recently purchased 79' still has the stock radiator but was lucky enough that it was well cared for by the previous owners - receipts of all the flushes and refills since the 80's.

BUT......

I still plan to switch to an aluminum BE COOL (haven't checked yet if they make one for my truck), but I had one in my 58' Chevy Step-aside and it cooled the 383 Stroker beautifully. I mean, drives up to Reno for Hot August Nights was never a problem. If you're from California drives up to Reno in August is the test of all tests as to whether or not your cooling system is up to par, I swear.

I also had a flex-a-lite BLACK MAGIC fan on a seperate switch, and that I recommend as well.

I found my BE COOL for my old Chevy on eBay for half the price because it was a display item and was all scratched up from handling. The seller had great feedback so I took the gamble and was lucky enough to not have any problems.

I plan to wait till after winter to swap mine out whether my original rad is working well or not. Even though it only has 97,000 orig. miles it's still a 30 year old radiator. Aside from the cooling benefits it's less weight and less drag from the clutch fan.

So, sure..there's some bling involved....but most importantly it will be a cool Toyota - inside and out.

 

are the ebay radiators mig or tig welded?

 

tig? whichever, to me it looked good for aluminum welding

 

damn yours looks much nicer then mine. I think they experimented on mine to get the welder settings right.

that looks like tig welding. I honestly couldn't tell with mine.

 

I too run a ebay special one and for the price and the quality of it you cant go wrong. The install was easy no problems with it. I have been running ir for 6months and I love it.

 

Link to seller please?
What will i have to make to get one in my 81?

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/TOYO...ptZMotorsQ5fCarQ5fTruckQ5fPartsQ5fAccessories


Heres where I bought mine, They are for the later body style, 84 and up. the actual core width should be nearly identical to your 81 core, the height may vary, it was about an inch taller than my 75 rad which was no problem for me. I had to remove the side mounts of the new rad and fabricate new mounts to fit my application, plus I had to make several other mods but thats because of my particular application, you may have to make new mounts, redrill the existing mounts, or redrill new mounting holes in your core support to fit it in your 81, couldn't say for certain.
I finished mine up yesterday and all seems well, gotta little fine tuning to do on a few things to suit me but nothing major.

 

pics??