Warning: This is wordy. Go get yerself a snack first:

My daily driver/hot rod/sorta-kinda 400 clone was seemingly pressing the outer limits of my factory style radiator, and I wanted some room to grow to a likely bigger engine in the near future, so I upgraded to big aluminum recently. Thought I’d write up a comprehensive review. As always, I went cheap. And as always, I overanalyze the heck outta things…so here’s my analysis maybe others will benefit.

I bought this $193 radiator off Ebay, with free shipping: Ebay cheapo Patriot radiator

Note it is made in the Champion factory…as are all the reportedly cheapo junk foreign assembled aluminum radiators. But online reviews indicate they seem to do fine for most, so I tried it. Patriot, American Eagle, Champion…and many other names. It’s all the same junk and I bought one.

Note it’s a 2 core, but very importantly, it is a 2 core with 1 INCH CORES. This is pretty critical. You can buy 3 core radiators, which would seem better on the surface until you read the specs. For example going to Champions website and looking at their $220, 3 core radiator for our cars, the specs show that they have 0.63” tubes. The 2 core I bought has 1” tubes. Both are Champions…do the math…

3 rows wide x .63” tubes x 2 (cuz rad tubes have 2 sides…top and bottom) x 42 rows tall x 23” wide core = 3651.5 square inches of cooling surface area.

2 rows x 1” tubes x 2 x 42 rows x 23” core = 3864 square inches of cooling surface area.

Not a huge diff, and I'm sure there is nothing wrong with the 3 core rad. But this math above might explain why the Champion site says their 3 core radiator is good for up to 600 hp, where my Ebay Champion 2 core radiator is good for 750 hp?

So the 2 core Champion radiator I purchased thru Ebay has MORE cooling capacity than the 3 core radiator Champion offers on their site. And it costs less. So in this case I concluded that 2 cores is simply a better choice than 3. Interesting, eh? "Patriot American Eagle" radiators...made in China...2 is better than 3...I could go on...Marketing methods are always fascinating to me…

BUT don’t fall into the trap of buying the WRONG 2 core Champion radiator. They ALSO sell 2 core radiators with smaller 0.75" tubes than the 1” I bought…those would be the $160 CHEAPEST versions you find first on Ebay when searching alum rads for these cars.

Test drive with old radiator. 88 degrees outside, full heat-soak interstate run and 10 miles of running around town. I/R gun on the lower hose while idling shows 189 degrees. My temp gauge in the car reading about 205 to 210 but never going past. Baseline set.

Time to pull it outta the box. All looking good. Further analysis time. Before install I plugged lower neck hole, filled it with water, and put it on the scale. About 24 lbs. Emptied the water into a bucket and measure capacity, about 4.75 quarts. Pulled my old Harrison 3 core copper/brass radiator off. Filled with water and put on scale…about 28 lbs. Measured capacity, about 4.25 quarts. So the aluminum radiator holds about 1 pint more fluid and weighs about 4 pounds less when full. Just trivia, but obviously 4 pounds lighter makes my car FASTER Whoo HOO!!!

Might as well calculate the cooling surface area of the old Harrison: 3 rows wide x .60” tubes x 2 x 29 rows tall x 23” wide core = 2401 square inches of cooling surface area.

So going from 2401 Harrison cooling inches to 3864 Champion cooling inches is a 61% increase in cooling surface area. Plus the 12% increase in coolant capacity allowing the coolant to remain in the radiator 12% longer and cool further…all this explains why aluminums often cool better than factory radiators, despite the fact that aluminum is not nearly as good as copper would be at transferring heat...in fact thermal conductivity is about half that of copper. But alum rads simply expose much more coolant surface area to the air, and for a longer time.

Enough analysis. Time to install. Removed fan for clearance. Attached factory shroud directly to the aluminum radiator out of the car with 4 self-tapping stainless screws, 2 top and 2 bottom. Fit perfect. Set the whole radiator/shroud assembly into the car and try to line up the radiator brackets to the holes in the radiator support. NO dice. It’s pretty obvious they were TRYING to match existing holes in my radiator support, and 2 of the 6 holes lined up perfectly. The others were off by maybe ¼” to ½”. Cheap foreign junk radiator…no surprise. 5 minutes with a drill solved all that, and I just drilled my own holes and bolted the radiator to the support after verifying the fan would center in the shroud fairly well. Slap the fan back on and all is well.

Test drive. Same route & speeds, 95 degrees outside this time. Lower rad hose IR gun reading 166F. Temp gauge on car showing 200 to 205. Perfectly fine considering my 190 degree tstat. So despite it being 7 degrees warmer (hot!) outside, the radiator exit temp was 23 degrees cooler than baseline. I call that a success.

I’ll report back if it ever leaks or has any problems. Otherwise I’m completely satisfied. Pics below. You’ll notice I have a coolant overflow jug where most of you keep a battery (I had that overflow on both rads). $9.99 kit at my local Pep Boys if anyone wants to copy that, and it works AWESOME. My battery is incidentally in the trunk. You’ll also see I haven’t hooked up my trans cooler yet to the radiator. I have a great big external cooler from a Ford Van ahead of the radiator, so I probably don’t need it (trans I/R gun readings never exceed 160 even on ultra hot days), but I might go ahead and plumb the radiator cooler ahead of the external sometime soon now that it has the extra capacity to help pre-cool the tranny fluid also. I just haven’t gotten around to that yet, and I had that disconnected it from the old Harrison radiator also so my temp comparisons were not impacted by trans cooling.

No regrets. If you're cheap like me and don't mind drilling a couple holes in your rad support, I recommend it. USA vs Chinese made...eh...it's a global economy and I'll accept that. My Chevy truck was built in Mexico and my wife's Honda daily driver was built 45 minutes from my house in Indiana...and somehow I always manage to sleep at night despite a few Chinese parts crammed under the hood of my muscle car. If you can't stand the thought yourself, then by all means please don't follow me off this cliff and just buy an American radiator...