Coulda sworn I'd once seen an SA/FB that had used an FC radiator...Looked like it fit fairly well/OEM-ish, they'd removed the black panel that closes off that opening in front of OEM rad. The top of the FC rad was then attached to where the front edge of that black panel was... Anyone else seen this done it? Does it fit as easily as my memory seems to indicate?

 

You can make a FC rad work, but it's not a direct fit and does not have all the same sensor locations available.

 

most of the ones ive seen, they slant the radiator forward, like it would be in the FC

i must have a pic, but can't find one

 

It's the same core size as '83-85, so you do a lot of work for no gain.

 

Slanting forward is what I meant by attaching to that front edge. IIRC, FC radiators are taller and thinner than the OEM SA/FB, which equals better cooling. Multi-row are less efficient, the heat is pushed from the front row into rows behind it, decreasing the efficiency of the rad. The ideal radiator would be thin, single-core/row and multi-pass.

 

The core size is larger than SA and early S2 but the same area as late S2 and S3. 22 by 19 or something along those lines.

The air moving through the radiator does not pick up much heat, which is why it takes a lot of airflow to pull heat out. Because of this, two, three, and even four row radiators still remove an appreciable amount of heat. The air isn't going from ambient to 190F after a single row.

NO to multi pass radiators! They pose a fairly significant flow restriction. Every time I have had to use one it resulted in overheating. They may technically pull more heat from the coolant, but that is because coolant does not move through them as fast. In a cooling system you want the coolant moving as fast as possible! We don't care about the temperature of the coolant in the lower radiator hose, we care about pulling BTUs from the engine. In an ideal cooling system the coolant will be moving so fast that there is a barely measurable temperature change between inlets and outlets, this requires lots and lots of flow.