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Best Radiator Choice for Crate Engines (Video)

Published by Crate Insider on 16th Jan 2017

Wondering if a single, double, or triple pass radiator is best for your racing program? We talked to Ben Baker from AFCO to answer that question. Radiators are available in our online store here.

Full transcript:
I'm Kate from Crate Insider.com and I'm here with Ben from AFCO Racing and we're gonna talk a little bit about cooling. Now Ben, I have one question: we have single pass, double pass and triple pass radiators. What is the difference, and which one is really the best for a Crate engine?
So on your radiator, you've got basically water coming into the radiator here, going across the core and coming out of the outlet. On your single pass radiator you look at the orientation of the necks and you'll see there's an inlet on one side and then there's the outlet that will be on the other side and then on a triple pass, there's the same configuration you're gonna have an inlet and an outlet so what you've got to look for there is the seams on the tank itself. That's how you can tell the difference between them, but how they work is just as their name, a single pass the coolant makes a single pass across the radiator before it goes into the engine. And a double pass it's actually gonna make two passes across this radiator before it goes back into the engine, and on a triple pass, it's gonna make three passes, so it's gonna go across, back, across, and then go back into the engine. As far as what we found that works the best for the crate late models is a double pass radiator. Where the coolant makes a single pass across the top and then makes a single pass across the bottom and then back into the engine.
As a follow up, I understand you need more water pressure the more passes it has to make, the more water pressure you need in order to make the coolant go through the radiator.
Yeah, when you when you have multiple passes, each pass will require more pressure to get the water across because you basically have reduced the amount of tubes that it goes through at one given time. So it's kinda like the water hose analogy. If you have a water hose standing with the hole wide open you're gonna put 10 gallons a minute out of it, it's gonna come out at a certain velocity. Well, with a double pass, it's like taking your thumb and putting it halfway over the water hose. The water is gonna speed up, it takes more pressure in the hose to put out. It's still gonna put out 10 gallons a minute, but it's gonna come out a lot faster, a lot higher velocity. Same difference on a triple pass. Now you've got three passes, so now you've covered up 66 percent of the hole, and now your water is coming out even faster, so that's one of the issues people miss when they go from single to double to triple. A lot of times they're running the water pumps too fast. And what that water going so fast across the radiator, it has no time to cool down. So if you get a guy who says you know, I went from triple to a double and actually helped the cooling, and he actually went down to a single, and it helped it even more, it's because he's spinning the water pump too fast.
That is super helpful! And of course, we do everything exactly for crates, so we have double pass radiators. We have several from AFCO, some lightweight options, so check those out in our store. But, thank you so much Ben. Really appreciate it.