Overheats on the freeway but not when cruising around town?

[Photon440]

This “debate” over tube size and fin count is the same debate about which dog will win, the big dog or the small dog? The big will ALWAYS win and the radiator with the bigger tubes and more fin count will ALWAYS cool better, ALWAYS! A brass/copper radiator is great, but copper isn’t made to tubes the size of the aluminum, for some reason, I’ve read it’s due to cracking? Plus it would get real heavy.

While copper is a superior heat conductor, I don't think there have been any copper radiators installed in cars since the 1930s. Our musclecars had brass rads, and brass doesn't conduct heat as well as either copper or aluminum.

 

[5.7 hemi]

The cores were copper and tanks were brass if I remember correctly.

 

[Photon440]

Both my radiator and heater were brass tubes. (1970)

 

[Kern Dog]

I have been so tied up with other things, I have not been able to road test this new radiator. It gets up to temp and stays there at idle but it did that before.

 

[Don67Satellite]

I have been so tied up with other things, I have not been able to road test this new radiator. It gets up to temp and stays there at idle but it did that before.

 

[Kern Dog]

Ha...Sorry, Don!
That still holds true. I stepped away to work on my house to prep it for sale....THEN fell off my roof and broke my shoulder in 2 places, broke a rib, got a concussion and am healing from all of that.
The car runs great....I just don't know if the core issue that caused it to overheat was corrected with this proper amount of coolant, a shroud and a new radiator. In theory, it should be fine. In reality, it still needs to be tested under the same conditions to determine if the changes fixed the issue.
Thanks for popping in. I'm honored that you thought to see if there was any progress. I like knowing that the various projects that I post about may help others with their own stuff. There are some helpful members here that have steered me the right way when I fumble through a project.
Thanks!

 

[Don67Satellite]

Ha...Sorry, Don!
That still holds true. I stepped away to work on my house to prep it for sale....THEN fell off my roof and broke my shoulder in 2 places, broke a rib, got a concussion and am healing from all of that.
The car runs great....I just don't know if the core issue that caused it to overheat was corrected with this proper amount of coolant, a shroud and a new radiator. In theory, it should be fine. In reality, it still needs to be tested under the same conditions to determine if the changes fixed the issue.
Thanks for popping in. I'm honored that you thought to see if there was any progress. I like knowing that the various projects that I post about may help others with their own stuff. There are some helpful members here that have steered me the right way when I fumble through a project.
Thanks!

No problem! I was just snacking my popcorn until you had a update! Sorry to hear about your misfortune, hope you are on the mend.

Now that the temps in my area are hitting 30+ degrees Celsius (86+ for my Imperial friends) I'm having some cooling issues (again) myself, so always good to see what others are doing.

Very informative thread. Hopefully yours are solved, get well soon @Kern Dog.