austinado16

Okay, the new $269 OEM AKG Brand radiator is installed, along with $155 worth of 4 new radiator airflow shrouds.

I found www.drivewire.com had the best price on the radiator at $249 with free shipping. I had to pay almost 8% sales tax because they have a shipping warehouse in Irvine, CA.

Kind of a fun job with the car up on ramps because everything's easy to get to, nothing is heavy, and it's a giant jigsaw puzzle.

To recap: car was fine around town but after an hour on the road, especially in the heat, it would start over pressurizing the system and puke small amounts of coolant out of the cap until the low coolant light would come on. Meanwhile, the temp gauge would be showing "normal" but the oil temp would be over the 130*C/266*F mark! Fans cycled fine, but did nothing to cool the car down. Headgaskets were fine when I tore the heads off thinking that was my problem. When a tank was removed from the radiator and water pumped into the other tank, it was easy to tell that the entire lower half of the radiator was plugged = 50% plugged radiator!

With the new radiator in, the coolant bleed process was dead easy. No belching coolant, no repeated topping up, etc. Also, the system doesn't seem to be making pressure right away, like it was before.

I'm pretty excited to have the car back and actually better than it's ever been since we bought it 2-1/2 years ago.

RedDragoN750

I'm sure you remeber the nightmare that I went through. And I just noticed the other day that my coolant is just below the line again (me freaks out and smashes something). Mine stays fairly cool though. Incidentally my oil never seems to get very warm at all, only after a loooong drive does it start to creep up the gauge a little, is problem?

DaveInSaltLake

I can see my oil temp gauge start creeping up within a mile or two.

austinado16

My oil ran hot on long drives (1hr +) in the heat (90*F+) like just below the one of the 130C mark

austinado16

We've got a nice 7% grade just out of town that is about 3 miles long and tops out at 1,500'. Perfect testing ground for cooling systems, and full throttle acceleration, etc.

Just flogged the car up both sides of that and just down the back side, I pulled into a parking lot and was able to pop the coolant tank cap off with some tremendous pressure and blowing coolant everywhere. It never would have been able to do that before.

Turns out 4,300rpm is 100mph. Mmmm....imagine that.

I think it's fixed, and it does have much better pull under full throttle with the mods to the intake, t-body and MAF.

A6George

Just see if there is any coolant loss over the week or two

austinado16

But we're driving it 140mi one-way on Saturday and back on Sunday, so that will be a good test.

I'm confident it's fixed though.