I have a 1980 fiat 124 automatic transmission. Rebuilt heads and replaced all cooling except radiator. Inside looked ok. Burped many times. Car runs good, but drives hotter than I like on hot days and slow speed. Not sure if should try to find place to boil radiator, or buy a new radiator. If buying what is better to buy, aluminum, or copper? Only one choice for automatic because of trans cooler in radiator. There is option to put a trans cooler outside the radiator. Would that help the cooling by having more cooling surface in radiator? Or would that just create more problems deviating from stock?
Google says the choice of Aluminum has less cooling ability, so only value is being lighter. Open to all thoughts.
thank you
My opinion is aluminum is OK as a cheap option short term, but when they fail and they do, it is a throw away item and nothing can be done with it.
If you can find a good professional radiator specialist to recore your existing copper or brass radiator using your existing top and bottom tanks if good, but fitting a core with extra cooling tubes and fins in the same material it will be a better long term solution and look more original.
As an apprentice motor mechanic in the 1960s we often used to resolder the necks and pipe fittings in copper radiators, even repairing cracks with solder, it was something easily done, not something you can do with plastic and aluminum.
If we needed the core replacing then we got a specialist to do the job. It was only in the 1980s that we got fed up with "specialists" that we would send rad for repair, they would keep it all day delaying our customers and then send a new aluminum rad when it was too late for us to do anything else and having to work late fitting it to get the car back to customer, when all they needed was the cores cleaning out!
So we stopped using them and just bought cheap aluminum rads direct ourselves and their companies went bust deservedly.
Another option if existing rad is good can be to fit an aftermarket electric fan behind the grill by a company like Kenlowe that specialises in them for racing and classics etc. I have found them very helpful in the past.
If car only runs hot in slow traffic that may be a solution , however if it generally runs slightly hot when going fast and plenty of cooling wind, but no other times or loss of coolant etc. that is usually an indicator of partially blocked tubes in the core of radiator.
