Last week, out of the blue, the radiator on my 03 sprang a leak from the core area. Kind of a weird event, and I'll be interested in finding out exactly where it's coming from. I will probably end up bringing it to a company that repairs aluminum radiators, because I don't think it's something I can repair myself, but they are hard to find anymore. And since I daily drive the car, I wanted it back on the road again asap. And I only wanted to buy a new radiator (not a used part).
Some of you probably already know this, but it simply isn’t possible to purchase a brand new, direct replacement Cobra radiator, from any company, anywhere, at this point in time. A Cobra-specific DPI number exists, but nobody manufactures them. Probably because there is so little demand. I think eventually someone will repop them - there are brand new radiators out there for pretty much anything that’s ever been built - but in the meantime, this may just be an example of the pitfalls of owning a limited-production vehicle. (It might be possible to buy a brand new OEM unit from an individual out there who may have held onto one, but I wasn’t interested in trying that route.)
Side note: does anyone know if the 03/04 Mach 1 came with the same radiator as the Terminator? In my research I couldn’t find out exactly, or tell from pics. (I think that it may have but not sure)
Anyway, to make matters worse, I didn't want any modifications whatsoever to any other system on the vehicle when I replaced this radiator. I didn’t want to drill holes to for the intercooler reservoir, move or bend abs brackets or brake lines, bend a/c lines, or otherwise do anything unrelated to the engine cooling system – I only wanted a direct, drop in replacement. All the mods I’ve done on my cars (perhaps except for the light bar on the vert) have never required any permanent changes to any other parts of vehicle, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Now, there are several companies who do make very nice, all-aluminum, high performance, upgraded, complete radiators for the 97-04 Mustangs, and I'm sure they are awesome pieces. But every one of them requires modifications to get them to fit our cars. For example, none of the passenger side tanks provide adequate clearance for the a/c lines, and none of them come in the stock 1.5 inch core thickness.
So, to get the car running again, I bought a generic, 4.6 Mustang GT replacement radiator. Unfortunately, that is what Ford would sell you if you brought your Terminator to a dealership service department for replacement. They are readily available (in a wide price range), but to me they are all pretty much the same exact thing: cheap, Chinese, disposable crap-ola. Plastic tanks, 1-inch aluminum core, and automatic transmission oil cooler built in... Turrible.
Anyway, neither of my cars are going to win any concourse trophies for all being all-original OEM stock examples, and this got me on the road again - which was my main goal for right now.
So far I don’t see any significant changes in operating temps – in traffic it could be hanging around more the upper range of where my fan comes on and shuts off, but I could be wrong. After all, it does have less surface area than stock. Other than that, it seems to be working out and driving like before. Several hard highway pulls show no difference in temps from before.
It should be interesting to see how many miles this lasts.
Some of you probably already know this, but it simply isn’t possible to purchase a brand new, direct replacement Cobra radiator, from any company, anywhere, at this point in time. A Cobra-specific DPI number exists, but nobody manufactures them. Probably because there is so little demand. I think eventually someone will repop them - there are brand new radiators out there for pretty much anything that’s ever been built - but in the meantime, this may just be an example of the pitfalls of owning a limited-production vehicle. (It might be possible to buy a brand new OEM unit from an individual out there who may have held onto one, but I wasn’t interested in trying that route.)
Side note: does anyone know if the 03/04 Mach 1 came with the same radiator as the Terminator? In my research I couldn’t find out exactly, or tell from pics. (I think that it may have but not sure)
Anyway, to make matters worse, I didn't want any modifications whatsoever to any other system on the vehicle when I replaced this radiator. I didn’t want to drill holes to for the intercooler reservoir, move or bend abs brackets or brake lines, bend a/c lines, or otherwise do anything unrelated to the engine cooling system – I only wanted a direct, drop in replacement. All the mods I’ve done on my cars (perhaps except for the light bar on the vert) have never required any permanent changes to any other parts of vehicle, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Now, there are several companies who do make very nice, all-aluminum, high performance, upgraded, complete radiators for the 97-04 Mustangs, and I'm sure they are awesome pieces. But every one of them requires modifications to get them to fit our cars. For example, none of the passenger side tanks provide adequate clearance for the a/c lines, and none of them come in the stock 1.5 inch core thickness.
So, to get the car running again, I bought a generic, 4.6 Mustang GT replacement radiator. Unfortunately, that is what Ford would sell you if you brought your Terminator to a dealership service department for replacement. They are readily available (in a wide price range), but to me they are all pretty much the same exact thing: cheap, Chinese, disposable crap-ola. Plastic tanks, 1-inch aluminum core, and automatic transmission oil cooler built in... Turrible.
Anyway, neither of my cars are going to win any concourse trophies for all being all-original OEM stock examples, and this got me on the road again - which was my main goal for right now.
So far I don’t see any significant changes in operating temps – in traffic it could be hanging around more the upper range of where my fan comes on and shuts off, but I could be wrong. After all, it does have less surface area than stock. Other than that, it seems to be working out and driving like before. Several hard highway pulls show no difference in temps from before.
It should be interesting to see how many miles this lasts.
