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Contributor
| Greetings, Owners! Mac's Radiator shop in Portland, Oregon has given us a price of $3,600 to re-core our FMC's radiator. Seems mighty high. Tempting to go with the suggestion of replacing it with an aluminum rad from an F450. Was wondering if anyone else has given that a try.
My local radiator shop says they can give a quote if I provide them with the height, width, and thickness of the radiator. I hate to tip off the shop in Portland that I'm checking up on them. Was wondering if someone in FMC-land might have easy access to those dimensions.
Regards to all! - Grant Hooker/Ottawa, Ontario CN (613-241-7979)
P.S. Sure was sorry to hear that Jim Black is not at the end of the phone anymore. So relieved and pleased that owner's are sharing information. |
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Veteran
Location: Bethune, SC | That is a ridiculously high quote. From what I have heard, I think the F450 radiator would be the way to go. Are you broken down in Oregon and need a radiator? I have a used one. Call and I will give you the details.
Henry |
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Veteran
Location: Soquel, CA. | Mine is stock and is 30" wide x 37" high x 4 1/2" deep. You should be able to improve the cooling easily with a newer, more modern, and yet smaller radiator. You will have to include modifying the shroud (very important to seal off around the radiator) and setting the radiator position relative to the fan just right. Others will have more specifics on that. I agree that that price is ridiculous.
Greg Miller |
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Veteran
Location: Bethune, SC | Copper radiator vs. Aluminum Radiator
http://www.caparadiator.com/aluminumvscopper.html
Henry |
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Extreme Veteran
Location: Scottsdale, Aridzona | Cool . . . Racing Websites about Cu(sic) vs Al radiators.
Out side of Row One . . . http://www.cgj.com/2013/07/16/aluminum-vs-copper-brass-radiator-fin...
This is in 5 parts read them all or just this last page.
Zoom Zoom, Lou #120 |
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Contributor
| Thanks to all you good owners for supplying great information. Henry Blair of North(?) Carolina spent a good deal of time on the phone with me. He felt the $3,600 price for recoring was way out of line. Speaking of "lines"...Henry had a great one. "If they have all their teeth, they don't know sl!&* about radiators!". Based on Henry's advice and Greg Miller's dimensions, I'll be doing some phone shopping and research today. I also plan to contact Ken H. about his success with the Ford F-450 swap. The radiator people in Portland plan to send photos today. Is there a way to post our site? Best regards! - Grant Hooker |
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Expert
Location: Cottage Grove, OR | Grant Hooker - 2014-10-10 7:16 AM Is there a way to post our site? Best regards! - Grant Hooker Yes. Go to the Album/Gallery area from the link at the top and then create a photo album titled to describe what you will be posting. You should put a description of what the album is about when you create it and then, for each photo, put a descrption of what that photo is illustrating in the "Caption" field. That makes it much easier for others to follow what you are wanting us to see. You can bring up a couple of my albums as examples. Barney Martin and Denny Shewmake also did the Ford radiator conversion with good results. See their photo albums. The more things described using photos the better! |
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Contributor
| Greetings! After excellent phone consultations with Henry and Lou Cruse, I phoned a speed shop in Portland, Oregon and received an estimate of $800 without labour for recoring my unit. I asked Mac's Radiator to re-install our unit after a "soft clean" (engine shampoo and hot water under moderate pressure) of the fins. They'll leave the rear bumper and fiberglass panel off so that the speed shop's job will be easier. Both Mac's and the speed shop buy customized recores from the same place in Langley, British Columbia. In case it's of interest, I'm pretty sure that company is Pacific Radiator. Their website is http://www.pacificradiator.com
After my discussions with Lou, I've purchased a fan on eBay that will suck fresh through the radiator rather than blowing it through from the engine compartment. Machining will need to be done to make the fan fit, but the speed shop seems ready to do that.
Thanks to Stephen Heinrichs for providing instructions on posting pictures. I'm not going to bother doing that right now, but will report on progress/results. Best regards and thanks again for your interest and your help! - Grant Hooker |
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Regular
Location: Greensboro, NC | Just a thought has anyone looked into or done an electric fan conversion and would it work seeing how big the fan and shroud is a custom would have to be made and could it move enough CFM to keep these big beast cool while under way?
Thanks
Chip Rives
#471, #721, #934 |
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Expert
Location: Cottage Grove, OR | Other than being inefficient as it means you are taking mechanical energy and converting it to electrical energy with the appropriate losses and then converting electrical energy back to mechanical energy with those losses, it seems a lot of complications to correct for what can be done with just a good radiator cleaning (inside and outside) by a radiator shop as a one time thing. We have many, many FMC's running the original radiator and fan setup that stay cool. We have several of them here at the rally. I have heard of their coaches getting up to 200 degrees on the long, steep grades on the way to the rally. Nothing to re-engineer. |
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Elite Veteran
Location: Oceanside, CA | I considered it when I did the Duramax conversion. I do think it's doable but you'd really have to buy into one of the two (puller or pusher) designs first. I know that Lou has advocated reversing the airflow(pulling outside air from behind the coach across the core and into the engine bay) but I don't know if anyone is running this configuration with some substantial miles logged.
The one thing I will say is that the tiny flex fans that most coaches that I've seen have are not able to move enough air to support the large stock radiators(this is from the perspective of someone who always tows with their coach), if you want to improve cooling on the cheap then look at a much larger/aggressively pitched fan. You'll pay a bit of a power penalty but you'll actually make that big radiator work like it's supposed to.
Edited by LCAC_Man 2018-02-19 10:22 AM
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Regular
Location: Greensboro, NC | Thanks for the responses I just figured I would ask as I am not a smart person mechanical wise or any other way for that matter so I reach out and hope to learn from the ones that have done stuff and made it work.
Thanks again,
Chip Rives
#471, #721, # 934 |
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Elite Veteran
Location: Oceanside, CA | Something like this could be a good upgrade: https://www.ebay.com/i/391948019351?chn=ps
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Radiator dimensions...
