LT5 Cooling and Radiators

[Hib Halverson]

Originally Posted by Dynomite

Good stuff there Hib

That is within 5 deg F of my readings with Ron Davis but then again you are 10 deg Hotter Ambient....and several other differences I am sure

But very close in Coolant Performance....Oh.....I did not say it but I am running a mix of distilled water and green antifreeze which I think your water wetter and straight water will prolly get you a bit cooler

I have a Fluidyne (not sure exactly which one) that was in a 1990 ZR1. I removed that Fluidyne and installed a Ron Davis moving that Fluidyne over to another 1990 replacing its stock radiator.

It gets complicated

There was only one Fluidyne which fit all late C4s (i.e.: anything with the tilted back radiator) and that's the one I developed with Jim Van Dorn's help.

Actually, we did all the hot weather testing in Palm Desert working out of Jim's old shop. We did that in September and the OAT then was actually even hotter than it was in Indio last Saturday–115° stick in my mind, but I'll have to confirm that. We tested on CA SR74 going uphill at about 8/10s. You can find SR74 on Google Maps by looking for the junction between US 111 and CA SR74. Once that road get curvy on the west side of Palm Desert is where we tested. The locals call it "7-level hill". Running the engine that hard, believe it or not, had lower ECT because the RPMs were up in the area where the system actually cools better, however, our sustained rpm was not so high that the coolant bypass became a problem.

I made a lot of posts to the ZR-1 Net back then explaining the Fludiyne design and how we tested it. Back then, our target competitor was the Ron Davis. I don't know what Davis sells now, but back then his radiator for late C4s was not a bolt-in and required fabrication work to fit.

The Fluidyne not only cooled better than what Ron Davis was selling at the time, but it dropped right in the stock cooling stack.

I'll look around in my several 1TB hard drives to see if I have any of that old stuff.

Also, if there's anyone here who knows how to research old ZR1Net posts from the 1998-1999 period, you may find my discussions of the Fluidyne.