Hc
 

Yah!

Came to think about something. These small HC's used in watercooling, are they really the main radiator of the car? The thing in the very front? It's just that, I thought those to be so much bigger.
If I go to the scrapyard looking for one, will I find it in the front, or where should I look? Are these smaller HC's the radiators for the temperature control of the intererior of the car?
Well, would be fine if someone cleared things up a bit for me.
Thanks!

HC = heatercore

is used for internal heating of the passenger compartment of a car. alot smaller than the radiator for the engine. one could also use the engine radiator of a motorcycle for size comfortability.

The heater core is not the main radiator. Neither is it the transmission cooler. It is a seperate module in the car. They are placed in different areas of the vehicle depending on the make and model. If my reasoning serves me well, you should follow the air ducting from the interior air and you'll eventually hit it, though you'll have to remove the ducting and hoses to actually get to it. In many vehicles, it isn't an easy task. Check out my database to find one that'll be the right size for you.

http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/sho...&threadid=4882

This does bring up an interesting question though. Would a real car radiator (the big ones....maybe 2'x1.5') cool a WC system well enough passivily? I mean if mounted either with one side facing out of the case or out of the case entirely. Anyone know?

I never took one to inspect it, so I must ask, are they built like hcores (parallel tubes/paths) or zigzagging (in lack of better word:rolleyes: )?

If you don't mind using an aluminum radiator. If your loop was in 1/2" and you were to passively cool your radiator, you shouldn't have any problem doing it. You know how hot car and truck engines get, right? Your CPU can't touch that kind of cooling, even if the radiator isn't being blown.

And to answer the question that is coming next, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars, you will not find a copper car radiator. Those are used exclusively in high speed racing applications and carry price tags that prove it. You can get a full size radiator for a Ford Ranger for around $200 brand new (do it, since the gunk in a used radiator is nearly impossible to purge and will severely hamper cooling as well as gum cooling loop up) for your local neighborhood Ford dealership. It is a bit bigger in size than the Chieftec "Sweetheart" full tower case that everybody has a few of.

The gunk is not impossible to remove. You can remove a good portion of it with stuff you can buy at a parts store...

I had to use it to remove quite a bit because my car was overheating.

mfpmax:

YOur talking about Radiator flush, arn't you? That stuff does clean out the cooling system in a car but who knows how well. For our/his purposes, it would probably be best to just buy a new one. UNLESS he wants to go out and buy 3-4 boxes of radiator flush and then pray that he got it all out. :)

Thats why I said a good portion of the stuff will be removed...

...but this is a full size car radiator i'm talking about...even half capacity of one of those things will still cool enough.

If one was to undertake the task of using a full size car radiator, I would not be wanting to buy a new one when the used one is gonna cool just as well as the new one since either way, the heat handling capibility is way up there for both.

And I only bought one can of the stuff...you can use that stuff...in combination with other methods of cleaning. Most likely the flush will loosen most of everything and then any other cleaning methods will take care of the rest.

Here is my problem though.

Yes, those car radiators have excellent cooling capabilites (mostly due to their size) however they were also designed to have good airflow around them. If this guy wants to go passive, then he will need all the cooling capacity he can get in order to compensate for the lack of adequet airflow. If there is even a small layer of gunk in that radiator, it could spell a difference in passive temperatures ranging from 1-10 degrees (depending on the gunk and the radiator)

The other problem is that if any stop leak products were used in that radiator and he used the flush, he would suddenly have a water fountain.

You may end up spending a bunch of money at a scrap yard for a useless radiator.

Safer and more effective to go with a new one. That's my bet.

If anyone was near me...i'd help test this cause I have a few radiators someone could "borrow" for testing...

Wow, that's great, thanks guys :)

I've really been thinking about what kind of rad would be best to go passive with, so I went out and got some 1/2" copper tubing, thinking to do something likethis guy, but then I saw this dude's rad, which also looked sweet. I think it may be a) more efficient, and b) a little safer to buy a new car rad, though, so I'm checking ebay :cool:

I'm leaning more toward the spiky one, though, just as a temporary solution ($10 on copper tubing for a passive, FANLESS rad is <b>much</b> better than $30 on a fanned H/C, to me)

Sorry, thread jacking, lon, I hope you got your answer and'll forgive me :)

NP, I got my answer, thank you very much.

lol... think of the flow rate and pump you'd have to use to make a coolant radiator work.. not to mention the fans! i got my camaro's new radiator for like $120... but i have accounts at local parts stores. 'course, if anyone is interested, i have that barely used radiator laying around. the problems with junkyard cores is they are often beat up pretty bad too, from bugs or just being banged around. the labor in restoring that seems too much to me to just buy a new one :)

now, if it was a classic car i was restoring cocours-correct, then i'd probably spend the time and effort to restore a radiator that can no longer purchased :)

If i Remember right ..The first reveiw i saw of the swiftech kits was passive and it seemed to work okay :)