The BeCOOL Aluminum Radiator Saga

Well I ordered the expensive "BeCOOL" radiator "72007" for an automatic transmission. Found that if you want to pay TOP dollar for it order one form 4WHEELDRIVE HARDWARE or Jeep Essentials. The best price is from Summit racing - you can save almost a Franklin getting it from Summit.

Why did I buy a BeCOOL aluminum rad? Because the web site and documentation and hype said "We gaurantee that our radiator will reduce your operating temperature by 20 to 40 degrees. Now that I can live with because a cooler engine means more power to the wheels from a cooler charge into the cylinders.

The radiator arrives - like a good customer I took out all the documentation - and I read it. Good thing too, could have been a big expensive mistake. Turns out you can't mount anything to the radiator using those neato little plastic through-the-rad-core tie-straps, that come with the external trans coolers and the PermaCool fans - because it'l VOID the warranty.

So I order the damn $89 dollar rackets - I mean brackets that are 4 little aluminum diecut pieces of metal with a couple of right angle bends in them, and 4 little rubber bumpers about the size of 5 quarters stacked together. ($89 bucks?) ok I order it because what was easy would void the warranty, and I want this to look good too. (Number one priority next to haulin ass right?)

The brackets show up - I'm off to the garage. Now in 95 degree weather, setting in traffic my 350 was cooking at 216 degrees. So this rad has got to be the answer of all answers.

I drag home about $40 bucks worth of steel transmission line with fittings to plum the trans to the rad nice and neat, use my handy tubing bender. Follow the directions from BeCOOL to the "T". Swivel the intake water outlet around to the driver side put the hoses back on. hook up the lines that I carefully bent and snaked under my Chevy Powerplant to the radiator and used some liquid teflon to make a nice seal on the hardware.

I used all $89 dollars worth of those brackets to mount my 2950CFM PermaCool fan up to the radiator with such nicety that it looks factory.

THE BeCOOL Road Test

It's a Saturday afternoon in June - 73 degrees out. Perfect I think. My old custom built 4 core copper-brass would have me running at about a cool 180 degrees as long as I'm moving (But not over 70mph) - this sucker is gonna BeCool!

I take it around the block - that would be out to rt 214 head east to rt 301 north up to the Walmart and then back to by house, a big loop about 6 miles or so. Off I go I'm doing about 60 to 70mph with the traffic. I catch a light near the Walmart, the temprature is still climbing. almost 200 degrees. I listen - the fan is running, water pump is pushing water, all my stuff is working great. The only change is the rad. Head through the light - pull a "U-E" and back to the house I go by the time I pull into my driveway the temp gauge (Nordskog digital) is reading 210 degrees - yea and it 73 outside.

Well now I'm thinking I just pissed away half a grand on an aluminum radiator (aluminum doesn't conduct heat as good as copper - duh?). Well it looked good and it had a guarantee. Guarantee - I'll check that out this week.

The call to BeCOOL

They were great! Very friendly. Knew what they were talking about. But told me that my PermaCool fan was the problem and that I needed to buy their $200 dollar BeCOOL European race car fan that was OEM tested and would do the trick. This sounded like a worth while thing to try but the radiator wasn't as good with my fan as my 4 core brass, but i's try it. Plus they were gonna loan me a fan if I loan them my credit card number.

The BeCOOL Fan Shows Up

Fan testing - I put the BeCool fan in the Jeep (I note that it is made in Italy - that's pretty Cool). I take it out for a spin - looks pretty good so far. It's a cool 70 degrees out. I'm tooling around the block same as before and the temp gets up to 190 degrees before I get home. Ok I'm not thrilled by this, now with the BeCool stuff it's working as good as the Copper Brass that I took out - so right about now I'm thinking Hmmm - $800 bucks to do almost the same thing as the copper brass and PermaCool fan that I had before I started.

Simple math - one last test. Put my custom copper-brass rad back in with the really awesome BeCool, Italian-made, Ferrari fan, and try that combo. If it can drop the aluminum rad temp by 20 degrees then I should be able to attain the temps I want with my custom copper brass rad.

Will test that this weekend June 22, 2002.