aluminum cross flow radiator

[al_lieffring]

I was looking through a Summit Racing catalog, and saw that they have H.D. aluminum cross flow radiators that are roughly equivilant in size to the opening in a 230sl. Other than price and weight what would be the problems / advantages to trying this?

Has any done this with any degree of sucess??

[mdsalemi]

Al,

Not with this car, but if you go back to The Star Magazine, last year I wrote an article on Satish Tummala of Motorwerks, and in the article is mention of his W126 conversion to V12.

He had a local place here custom fabricate an aluminum radiator because the stock one would no longer fit.

I don't know which shop he used, but there are many custom radiator fabricators around these parts, the land of custom rods.  I did a quick search and found about 4 local--that's without any effort.

The photo of his engine bay is the lead photo here: http://www.mbcoupes.com/w126index.htm

[philip]

Ask someone to show you the tubes of a aluminium core apposed to a conventional brass/copper one and you will notice that the aluminium has only one tube which is oval shaped and contains more water that the copper one with two or three cores which are small tubes for the area that they take up. To sum up a aluminium radiator with this one oval tube core does contain more water and is more effective