radiator location

has anyone put their radiator behind the grill instead of in the dog house area? I am switching to a late model fuel injected engine and will need to make sure this runs cool. I did get an aluminum radiator with the van built for the stock location but it seems that the stock location may not be the best for cooling a v8 ??

Behind the grill may make for difficulties in getting the air out of the cooling system.


That said, the general consensus on cooling is 4 row core, shroud, belly pan, and a high performance water pump and water wetter in the coolant.

I've looked at the "behind the grill" location myself. I'm not seeing enough room to gain much in size. The distance between the brakes and throttle to the pass. side frame make it fairly limited widthwise. What have you got for a radiator to work with? Height /width? 2 row aluminum? crossflow or downflow? Going with an automatic trans? Got some pics? My set up has Non of the above listed and seems to work okay. But that being said . What Greg has listed has been the stock norm for a 2nd gen setup and seems to work also.

An an old VW Bus guy some folks change their aircooled to water cooled by putting the radiator horizontal back in the frame rails and the fanning the air down to keep down debris. Have thought about getting an old house A/C coil and putting it in the back via water heater hose ran up front thru the water heater circuit without fan. Figure that long of a run would add about a half gallon of coolant and dissapate quite a bit of heat. The coils are throw aways so the main expense would be about 20 feet of radiator hose and a bunch of hanger and clamps. Could even use std. copper pipe for a lot of it and lose more heat. Hence, I'd connect it for the summer and the heater for the winter and I bet it would work out prett good. Figure on putting it in that frame section that has almost nothing else in it. A Spring experiment as soon as I can find the near right sized coil.

Hmmmmm........4 core radiator, stock water pump, 7 blade clutch fan, coolant recovery system, 195 degree thermostat, no shroud, no belly pan (I am looking for one {hint} ), and no over heat problems.

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