Radiator upgrade experiences?
I've never had an issue with the 3 core, 26" Champion radiator in my Duster. Also a 400hp (ish) 340, .060" over with iron heads. When I ran a straight flex fan I would have issues with running cold in cooler weather, with my Ford Contour electric fan set up I've had it out in 110° F weather without issue.
These are the factory pulley ratio's. I'm not saying you have to run them, but, if you're underdriving your fan/water pump compared to factory it can definitely add to a cooling issue.
The other thing to note is the water pump configuration. Air conditioning cars got overdriven fans and water pumps, but they also got water pumps with fewer vanes. The high volume water pumps were used on the non-AC cars with a .95:1 pulley ratio, the 6 blade pumps were used with the 1.3: or 1.4:1 pulley ratio found on cars with air conditioning. So for the air conditioning cars, which needed more cooling, they set the fan up to be overdriven significantly from the non-AC cars, but decreased the water pump output so it wouldn't increase as much as the pulley ratio did. I don't know for sure how the 6 blade impeller at 1.3:1 compares to the 8 blade impeller at .95:1. My suspicion would be that the water pump output remained relatively similar between both versions, the increase in air volume from the fan was what they were after.
Again, it's a system, the whole thing has to work together. Guys like fancy radiators because they're visible and expensive, but boring stuff like pulley diameter is just as, if not more, important.
I've never had an issue with the 3 core, 26" Champion radiator in my Duster. Also a 400hp (ish) 340, .060" over with iron heads. When I ran a straight flex fan I would have issues with running cold in cooler weather, with my Ford Contour electric fan set up I've had it out in 110° F weather without issue.
These are the factory pulley ratio's. I'm not saying you have to run them, but, if you're underdriving your fan/water pump compared to factory it can definitely add to a cooling issue.
The other thing to note is the water pump configuration. Air conditioning cars got overdriven fans and water pumps, but they also got water pumps with fewer vanes. The high volume water pumps were used on the non-AC cars with a .95:1 pulley ratio, the 6 blade pumps were used with the 1.3: or 1.4:1 pulley ratio found on cars with air conditioning. So for the air conditioning cars, which needed more cooling, they set the fan up to be overdriven significantly from the non-AC cars, but decreased the water pump output so it wouldn't increase as much as the pulley ratio did. I don't know for sure how the 6 blade impeller at 1.3:1 compares to the 8 blade impeller at .95:1. My suspicion would be that the water pump output remained relatively similar between both versions, the increase in air volume from the fan was what they were after.
Again, it's a system, the whole thing has to work together. Guys like fancy radiators because they're visible and expensive, but boring stuff like pulley diameter is just as, if not more, important.
