chardonet

Greetings! I got a slow leak in the center radiator, and will need replacement of all 3 soon. I've read about the OEM vs. CSF aluminum units. Anyone here have experience with the CSF units, and know the pricing of the OEM units? Should I be aware of any other issues that anyone here may have experienced? Thanks in advance!

993GT

I have the first set of 996 GT2/TT rads made, ~ 2.5years and ~42k km so far...have been great and I see better cooling capacity, and no plastic to ever break...
started here..https://rennlist.com/forums/996-turb...radiators.html

chardonet

Thank for the info!

Jamie@dundonmotorsports

We have the CSF radiators on a few customer 997 GT3's and they've been solid, not any major change in running temps, but car mainly only sees track time...

Spyerx

Pwr is another. That's what the race cars use

P.J.S.

CSF is a great replacement for oem
I have them and have no complaints (possibly the car Dundon is referencing)
No plastic, great support
I would not hesitate to buy them again
I think they lower the temps a bit but the last thread about them I was told that my real world experience did not meet the criteria of scientific evidence

turbofever

has anyone ever realized that aluminium is far more susceptible to heat transfer than the oem casings/fittings?

same goes for the intercoolers on turbo cars.. the end tanks on the gt2rs ic's

i have heard of the connections failing on the intercoolers as they can crack over time. other then that i cant imagine they offer better cooling results.

993GT

^ not sure what you mean? we want ALL possible heat transfer...the rads are the only real source of heat at the front, no other radiant heat sources...

powdrhound

Improvement in cooling capacity attributed to the all aluminum units is highly debatable because when people are replacing old beat up and plugged up radiators with new shiny units, they are clearly seeing an improvement. Not really a fair test as you are not comparing brand new X with brand new Y.

Case in point. I just replaced my 14 year old OEM radiators (which were still tight as a drum but full of crud) with a brand new set of the exact same OEMs. Guess what? My logged temps dropped 15-20F across the board due to the fact that they were clean flowing without any crap packed into the fins. I think I paid $1200 for all 3.

TRAKCAR

Oems always start leaking a bit around the edge metal to plastic.
When we tapped the edges tight again they would stop leaking. Better go aftermarket, oems are weak.

turbofever

good point john,

993GT

Absolutely true John...however in my case, all external fins were in good/clean shape, and have almost the same mileage on CSF vs stock now. Low speed cooling is where I see the biggest benefit, IE. hard running then pits or 'traffic'
That said, my main reasoning behind the aluminum rads is durability, 1 day of down time is 1 day too much

Drew_K

I replaced all 3 of my OEM radiators with CSFs after getting a rock in the center radiator at a track event. They seemed to be well built and a good fit. The only issue I ran into was that one of the small hoses that connect to the center radiator wouldn't stay on. Porsche uses clips rather than hose clamps to connect the hoses to the radiators, and the clip on that small hose would not stay on very well. I ended up using safety wire in place of the clip to keep that hose connected. That was 1-2 years ago and no issues with them.

CSF Cooling

Hi Guys,

Here is some independent data that was sent to me from Tour-De-Force Power Engineering out of the UK. They are a well know Formula 1 / OEM development company with a race track located outside of their building.

Using our 996 cup radiators, they have proven that our radiators do perform better than OEM in race conditions, keeping temperatures stable.

Please see the chart and the message copied from an email sent to me a couple of months ago.