It's in my garage, haven't had a chance to pressure test it. I'll do that tomorrow...

 

SLOASFK said: As you may or may not know, there's little on these cars that can be likened to any other car. Sure, your minivan has 175k on stock radiator and coolant, but I'm positive your minivan doesn't have a 2-rotor, twin turbo engine pumping out over 1800 degree exhaust temps. I'm also positive your minivan wasnt built for performance use.


Coolant temps in a minivan or any other car radiator are no different than an FD. 180-230+F. Rotaries run the same coolant temps and same coolant pressures as all other cars. People claim the problem with the stock FD radiator is the capacity (volume/size) is too small. Sure it is.....after you hop up the motor, run more boost, more horsepower than stock then sure you will need more heat removal capability.

Like I said my FD was fine in bone stock form for 55k miles. ..........and frankly with my "hopped up" motor I'm not convinced my Fluidyne is doing a better job. It still gets up to 220+F going up steep grades even after I fixed the hose pinch problem. The problem isn't so much radiator capacity it is the poor stock position of the radiator and the tight engine compartment which chokes off the air flow through the radiator. This is what causes cooling problems. Even with both fans running it is still marginal. People who have relocated the rad, gone single and got rid of all the crap in the front of the motor don't have cooling problems because the engine compartment is opened up allowing air to flow through. Also vented hoods help with air flow.

Another key to keeping a rotary cool is oil coolers. The FDs (non-R1) oil coolers are much smaller than the 1st gen RX7s which have less horsepower. High oil temps with normal coolant temps will blow a motor too! A friend of mine who raced a 1st gen didn't last one lap when he tried to run with the oil cooler bypassed!

.........anyway I got off topic sortof...nufsaid.

 

I am on stock twins, and have used both the plastic and Fluidyne radiator. I have the A/C removed, and runs fans when I am city driving or at a stop light. I never see temps over 84*, ever.

 

Hey A-rod the only thing that fluidyne would do is replace that Radiator...Doing the whole sue thing will be waste of time and money. If i was in your shoe, I will try and get a new one from the company. Once you have the new one inspect it or sell it and get your self a KOYO....Up to you bro...Good Luck

 

FWIW, I've seen temps exceeding 97 degrees C (207 degrees F) several times in my car, and so have quite a few other people--with no ill effects. Remember that the stock system activates cooling fans at 105 C (221 F). See the big fat cooling thread. Also, consider that perhaps you may have a non-genunie Fluidyne unit. Sorry to hear of your misfortune.

 

Sorry to say this, but I don't think you will have any success trying to get anything from Fluidyne. The car didn't overheat, and is prone to coolant seal failures on a 15 year old engine. I hope your seals are still ok .

 

I've heard alot about "fake" and knockoff parts lately, where did you get the fluidyne radiator from? I've seen fluidynes before and was always impressed with the quality.

 

Again, the radiator was purchased from SportCompactOnly.com

I just find it very difficult to believe that there is no relation between my radiator dumping all of my coolant and my coolant seals going, especially in the same week. I'm almost positive that the car overheated, but I'm not 100%. I got out of it when it was about 120*C+, and opened the hood. I heard boiling coolant while I was moving my hand around the lines. I was more concerned about what in the hell was going on under the hood than what my computer was telling me. In hindsight, I'd probably have paid more attention to the latter.

 

wow i am not surprised well since your talking about fluidyne i mite as well add another on list! i have the fluidyne n flow rad as well and mine started to leak a little bit and i j ust noticed not to long ago. i was pretty choked my self. well at least now i know where the coolant was going slowly slowly over time

 

Your best bet IMO is to request a replacement from Fluidyne. Unless it's obvious that there is a major manufacturing screw up, you pretty much are wasting your time to attempt to sue them for damages.

 

Looking at Fluidyne's BS warranty, it looks cheaper just to pay someone to weld it up for me. They basically want you to pay for shipping both ways, etc, etc. I was just hoping that if I could PROVE that their POS radiator took my coolant seals, that I could get assistance in paying for a new engine. For the price of a new radiator, it isn't even worth my time.

 

Are you sure you don't mean the koyo n-flow?

 

RX78U, i noticed the same hose-pinching with my fluidyne. my seals are toast but never overheated on the stock gauge. i'll have to hook up a real temp gauge when i get the motor running again and see if the temps are acceptable.

maddslow have you called them to talk person to person? they might be more cooperative than u expect

 

lol i will have to double check that! you might be right lol. i am not at home but watever the rad is its leaking. lol

 

Madslow I can give you a direct email to someone at Fluidyne who I am sure will hear you out. I must agree with a lot of the people here when I say "Who installed it" and "what mods" were done to it and so on are going to play a huge factor. Also did you have this mounted in a way that all 4 corners were bolted down to such a restrant that you maybe twisted the body enough to cause one of those weld to crack?

Either way PM me and I will give you his email. GL bud.

 

I'd suggest contacting the company and explaining the situation. I had something similar with a different company and before I smeared their name I contacted them and provided proof that their product did in fact result in my engine going bye bye. End result, they covered my new engine. If the company stands behind their product and it is very clear that the product was at fault they should have no problem doing this if it is run by honest people.

 

If you really want to sue, here is the steps I would take:

1) Talk to a real lawyer, not forum members (no offence)
2) Take the engine apart to see for sure it is a melted seal and not pinch or anything else. (Document EVERYTHING)
3) Send the rad. to a lab for testing. Have them look around the hole for mineral deposits that could have placed a pin hole in there. Have them PT all welds. (Lawyer should know of labs to do this. I work for a lab company that does so much legal stuff. We have a bone yard of cars that were in accidents. Off subject)
4) Check Fluidyne QC standards. Do they have CWI check all welds? Do they pressure test all rads.? If so, to what pressure and how long do they hold it?
5) Then the lawyer will start his stuff to see if you have grounds.

MO, I would just fork up the money to get it fixed and put in a complaint to see I could get any money for them. The only time I have heard of an aftermarket auto company pay for something is when AEM put a NO2 set-up wrong on a car and blew a hole in the engine. But they did the work themselves for the customer. And now the post above.

 

Why does everyone always want to sue everyone else and blame someone else everytime something goes wrong?

 

1. To fix what there product broke
2. Money

Why else would you sue?

 

"Claims for internal damage of the engine, components, or user’s vehicle are not covered by this limited warranty."

That quote is from their website: http://www.fluidyne.com/cs_warranty.html
paragraph 3. If you sue them, I would imagine you'd have to try to argue this clause does not apply to you, which would seem pretty hard.

Based on the first paragraph, you are entitled to a new radiator.

 

Thanks pal, but I'm not some loser that thinks that because of a mistake I made that I'm entitled to free stuff. The radiator was CLEARLY very poorly made, dumped all of my coolant, and now my seals are quite possibly(99%) blown.

I understand that it is an older vehicle with very old seals, but lets compare it to another situation... just because someone is old, can you sell them a shitty breathing machine, and when your garbage equipment breaks down and kills them, say it is ok because they were old and might have died on their own, anyway? NO! So don't come in here preaching like I'm trying to take something that wouldn't rightfully mine, I'm against lawsuits like that 99% of the time, but this is an instance where it is very obvious that a manufacturer's product had direct involvement in the engine's failure.

Some people just **** me off...

 

I noticed that myself, but I'm curious as to what a court would have to say about it. If every warranty worked like that, don't you think Wal-Mart would have some sort of "Enter at your own risk" signs to prevent them from being sued every day?

 

Nothing against you but if it has that bad of welds why did you install it? Think about it. Did you notice the bad welds after what you are claiming that it had a crack or whatever caused the leak. How do we know it was installed correctly and not banged up. Just suck up the loss and forget it. You will never win this case.. Sorry to say this but it's the truth...

 

while I'm not a fan of the whole "I'll sue you over anything." mentality in this country, I will chime in just to say that the guys who installed it are top notch and know what they are doing better than most in this country. They are top teir rotary mechanics and have been doing this **** since the 90s. And it goes without saying this was not their first Fluidyne rad install.

Believe me, they will veto your parts and refuse to work on your car before they'll install anything that they don't trust. If you guys are reading this, feel free to post pics of my Fluidyne.

 

Who installed it? Let's see what they say? Let's see them say it had bad welds ...If it did why did they install it?