After a couple of weeks of a leak free cooling system, I see a leak in the top tank solder joint over on the drivers side of the radiator. This radiator has some kind of repair shop decal on it. So it's either been repaired or replaced.

I'd rather put in a higher capacity radiator. Maybe a double or triple row version? Not sure how many rows are stock. Are there any vendors out there that you have had good experience with?

Mike

 

stock radiators are single row. Is your car stock? If it is I don't recommend it. I made a mistake of doing that, and the motor took forever to reach operating temp, im not sure if it even did. I just remember the whole 6 months of poor fuel economy, and wasted 300 bucks.

 

that should have little to nothing to do with the capacity of your radiator. that's what the thermostat is for... reduces flow to allow the engine to heat up.

i went double-core in my civic and noticed no change in warm up time. the only thing that should change is the amount of "abuse" it can handle. single-core will not so easily keep cool during vigorous driving/high demand.

 

I thought this radiator might be a dual row. I'll look again.

I was thinking also that a dual row radiator would only increase the total coolant volume by maybe 20 or 30%. So your's not warming up sure sounds like something else was not right.

Mine only overheated when climbing a steep grade with the AC on in 100 degree weather, with a weak mixture of coolant. Maybe only 30/70 instead of 50/50. I'd rather not have the experience again, so swapping in a heavy duty radiator and 50/50 coolant I suspect will do the trick.

Mike

 

I have the stock (Denso) radiator in my MT 92 accord and I never had any problem with overheating whatsoever even in 120+ summer heat in Arizona with full blast A/C .

No, wait, I take it back. It did overheat once when the upper radiator hose leaked and it lost the coolant -- it was the only time I saw the temperature gauge needle move from the middle position all way up into the red...

 

Is your radiator brass or one of the newer aluminum/plastic versions?

I'll get the coolant mixture down do 50/50 and that should help. Although with a leaking top tank, I could fix it or just get a new heavy duty radiator since I may have to replace it anyway.

Mike

 

Quite frankly, I am not sure. I took a look at my old (OEM) radiator. I scraped some of the factory paint off the vertical run tubes, and they looked like aluminum to me. The weird thing is that these tubes are attached to metal plates at the top and the bottom, which are then covered by plastic tanks. So these plates sure did look like copper to me when I scraped the paint off. This is weird because bimetallic contraptions like this should corrode like crazy where the two metals meet... Unless the copper part doesn't come in contact with the coolant...

Anyhoo, I think it's aluminum (with plastic tanks), but don't quote me on that.

Is your radiator all-metal? If not, don't bother fixing, just get a new one -- these things are not meant to last forever, you know. Even if it's fixable, radiators loose their cooling efficiency over time because the cooling channels get covered with crap on the inside, especially if the cooling system was neglected.

 

My radiator is definitely all brass. I can see the solder joint as there is no paint on the top tank.

I was thinking of having it rodded out and boiled to restore it to new since the top tank has a tiny leak any way.

Mike

 

American Radiator is up near where I live and they have good prices on rads and they have lifetime warranty so I usually buy from them. My last 3 cars however have not required a new radiator and my 94 honda is now approaching 16 years old.

and I would go dual core as a replacement if you can somply due to the additional reserve capacity and better trans cooling for the AT

 

Check ebay for aeon imports they have brand new radiators that fit right in at 50 bucks