Radiator question, for thermodynamics/heat transfer experts Options

[bondo]

Hopefully I can get some input on this without too much of the inevitable "that won't work" (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/smile.gif)

I'm cutting down a large tall radiator into a shorter one.. 1/3 the height to be exact. The 3 layers of radiator will be set up in a cross flow, sequentially. The hottest water will enter the rearmost later, travel across, then across again in the middle layer, and across yet again in the front layer. The idea is the hottest water gets the hottest air, and the coldest water gets the coldest air. This way delta T stays pretty constant.. I'm thinking of it as trying to heat the air as much as possible, which would cool the water as much as possible.

So I realize that cooling capacity will be reduced, as I will be dealing with 1/3 as much air. But then the cooling capacity must be more than 1/3, because it's 3 layers thick instead of 1. My question is what percentage of the original cooling capacity should I be expecting? Would it do me any good to do 5 layers instead of 3? (by adding 2/3 of a second radiator)

The original radiator cooled the same engine just fine, in a heavier car, with an AC condenser preheating the air. I will be running an electric pump, so I will have an advantage at idle.

[bondo]

QUOTE (ewdysar @ Feb 2 2005, 01:19 PM)

Another attribute that Scott discussed with me that seems to point to thinner cores is the fact that the heated air expands requiring more space to flow through. This is a real problem on 6 core rads, the flow is limited to the amount of expanded air that can fit through the last pass. It seems that cores that increase in area as you move farther back in the flow could help, but I have never heard of this being done. This concpet is fairly new in car design, all my old trucks had 4 pass rads, but any of my recent cars or trucks have had only 2, at the most. Each of the new car rads that I've looked at have fairly large surface areas, so this trend may be a function of that. Just more possible stuff to consider... Eric PS. The only thing that I could complain about my RH setup, is that it may cool to well. I guess it could be worse...

Interesting.. My mustang has a 3 row radiator, and each row is about 1/2" deep. This radiator I'm hacking up for experimentation has a single row that's more like 1.25". I wonder if that's why.

Thanks to all this discussion I have some new ideas to try, if there's room.