Carl Fausett

Howe makes our radiators for us. But you knew that.

ROG100

Actually I did not I thought you bought them from a company called V12 or something. As you do not compete with 99% of what I sell I take little notice of you are your products in a nice way.

The radiator looks nice, I will admit, but it still has the earlier brackets for the fan shroud I will need to cut off. The S4 shroud does not fit well because of this. Looks like Danny bought this one direct from Howe and I will be putting it along with the engine in my 928 pick up truck. I trust from your comments that it will work well for me.

Salutations,
Roger

ROG100

Mustang rad looks great for the price as long as you do not need oil or transmission cooling.

Carl Fausett

Either that, or it is one of our first-year models. They had fan shroud mounts for all the fan shrouds on every radiator, customer instructed to ignore or remove the fan shroud mounts they didn't use.

We stopped doing that about 3 years ago, and make each radiator exactly to fit the car. We have 9 models. So they drop in, and the customer does not have to modify anything.

So I have an idea you might have one of our first-year units. About 2009 or early 2010.

ROG100

Carl,
The only reason I say it was bought directly is that it has a large Howe Racing sticker on it.
Roger

Carl Fausett

That's fine. They made 928 radiators before I started working with them.

The radiators they make now are our joint 928MS/Howe design and they've gotten better as a result.

FLYVMO

Just an FYI, I received an email from Ron Davis Radiators today (no affiliation), and they make them for the 928 as well. I have used their "DEVEK" radiator for the past 10 years with no problems to date. Drops straight in and perfect fit. They are slightly more expensive than Carl's at $948 for one with integrated oil cooler. Nice to know there are 3 choices (at least until Behr units are gone).

Cheers!
Carl

ROG100

Carl,
I checked and you are correct - purchased in 2008.
Roger

erioshi

All of this makes for an interesting read. And of course I'm researching radiators because the OB I'm rescuing has a radiator issue. When I took the radiator in for testing as part of my "just in case" process, a small leak was discovered in the left side end tank, near where the tank plastic meets the fingers of the core. The joy of rescue projects, right?

One thing that has caught my attention in this discussion about the aluminum radiator failures, is that no discussion of electrolysis as possible cause of failure instead of manufacture quality has been broached. While I have not tested my car for the problem (it's not holding coolant & the radiator is out), I would not be surprised to see this problem is more common in older cars than most people would suspect. It's something I became aware of while helping to sort out a friend's string of premature radiator failures in his fun little tuner car. That car required quite a bit of specialized problem solving to get the whole cooling system properly neutralized and the problem fully solved.

Basically, there are two versions of the problem. One is that old coolant will break down and go acidic, and then proceed to corrode the internal components of the cooling system. The other form is that a car's cooling system can involuntarily become involved in the electrical grounding process, and then the same type of corrosion begins to occur. While I'm not familiar enough with the 928 yet to just how likely ground-related electrolysis is, broken-down coolant seems to be a very common problem in infrequently used cars. The threads about damage to the engine block from the cooling system would be exactly this problem. The problem is particular hard on aluminum components like radiators and aluminum heater cores.

Here are a couple of quickly googled links that discuss it further and cover some basic testing for the problem:
http://www.freeasestudyguides.com/electrolysis.html
http://www.fordforumsonline.com/thre...ing-system.67/

GerritD

the best material for a radiator is copper.
Easy to repair and they don't leak that quickly due to corrosion.
I had my radiator repaired by replacing it completely by a copper one, since my original aluminium radiator did not cool well because it was completely clogged as the inner tubes of the alu radiator is much smaller than a copper custom made radiator.
Oh : cost price of a copper custom made radiator is 600$

SMTCapeCod

And there is now the 928Intl replacement option as well. Or at least it's imminent.

Alan

Just reading all this thread for the first time...

Some oddball conclusions here IMO

Returns to a manufacturer relate to 'in warranty' claims only. So what's the warranty? 928 Motorsports says 2 years with some limitations, I doubt there is a much better deal than that. If there are 2-6% failures in 2 years what do you think it will be in 4, 6, 8 or 10 years? and we are still at only 10 years.

Frankly if a radiator I installed failed in 5 years I'd be very unhappy. I was!

I installed an aluminum C&R radiator and it failed at 2.5 years - I had it repaired - it failed at 5 years - I had it repaired - it failed again at 7 years - I threw it away and bought a Behr.

But I don't count in the 2-6% failures due to the age of the failures.

My experience was 3 failures for my one purchase experience of an aluminum radiator - all the failures were different and not directly related to the previous repairs. All the hassle and all the expense of repairs made this not cheap to start with radiator a very expensive and troublesome radiator. Why did I buy it? - Behrs were just out of stock when I needed one.

What I have read on RL suggests many others have had these same out of warranty (but WAY too soon to feel OK about it) failures.

Still feelling lucky?

Alan

bureau13

I don't understand why an aluminum radiator on this car would be more prone to failure than an aluminum radiator on any other car. And there are lots of aluminum radiator upgrades out there for other sports cars. I had two different ones on my RX-7 (so yeah, one of them did fail) but in general they didn't have this reputation "over there."

z driver 88t

erioshi - you raise some good points and there have been discussions about whether the issue is with electrolysis or manufacturing and there has been no real concensus except to learn that there have been failures at around year 2 or 3 by people who are pretty maintenance conscious. Most antifreeze should not break down that quickly I would think - with many today claiming a 5 year life span.

That said, I don't know if Brand X coolants are prone to breakdown more quickly than "top shelf" coolants. On my next tbelt job I'll be switching over to Zerex G-05 which seems to have a very good reputation on the forum.

bureau13 - I concur completely. I came to the 928 world 6 years ago after a long life of modified Japanese cars (mostly Nissan) where the aftermarket aluminium radiators are very common and failure rates are very low; so low that the subject generally doesn't even come up on the forums. I'm not sure what the issue has been with 928s unless it's just that the market and production runs are so small that the "growing pain" years of product development take a much longer time than in a high volume market. Carl's radiators have undergone many design changes over the years and he probably sells less radiators in one year than a Ford or Chevy specialty shop sell in a week. So it could be the kind of thing that failures which may only show up 2-3 years out need some longer term R&D to really get right.

On the plus side - I am grateful that there are people out there like Carl, Greg, Mark, Colin, Roger, Sean Jerry, Alan and others (I'm sure I'm forgetting some) that come up with new a creative ways to keep our cars on the road as Porsche gradually stops supporting replacement parts or they just become outrageously expensive. And new products are bound to come with growing pains.

erioshi

Given the hands-on nature of this community, I was just surprised at the lack of data or reporting on electrolysis. The basic testing procedures are simple, all that is needed is a decent multi-meter that can detect a minimum of 1/10 of a volt. The other parts are a good ground and the ability to dip the positive lead into the coolant.

I do find the increase in failures at two to three years interesting. While new, good coolant shouldn't begin to break down at this point, what if the cooling system had previously had a problem with electrolysis? A simple flush will not necessarily solve the problem when the chemical reactions have taken hold on the metal parts of the system. The only real way to know for sure if electrolysis is present is to test the car before flushing the system.