Radiators are a vital component of your engines cooling system. If your radiator were to fail, your engine would begin to over heat in a matter of minutes. A
by transferring it into a stream of air passing through it. Rectangular in shape, radiators sit behind the grill at the front of every modern car, truck or SUV. As you drive forward, air rushes through the radiator, allowing the heat exchange to happen.
How are Radiators Constructed?
Radiators are typically made out of aluminum. They feature two coolant tanks, one on the left and one on the right side of the radiator. One tank is used for storing hot coolant and the other is used for storing cold coolant. It should then make sense that each tank has a port on it used for moving coolant into and out of the radiator system.
Connecting the two tanks are a series of hollow tubes that allow the coolant to flow between the two tanks. The hollow tubes have lots and lots of fins attached to them. These fins help increase the amount of surface area around the tubes, so when air rushes through the radiator, the heat exchange becomes more efficient, cooling the engines coolant faster.
The radiator is connected to the coolant system via two rubber
radiator hoses. At the top and bottom of every radiator, there are two caps. The
radiator cap at the top is used for checking and topping off engine coolant, but this must only be done when the coolant is
cold. When the coolant is hot, the radiator is under pressure and could erupt hot coolant if the top cap is removed while the coolant is still hot. The cap at the bottom is used for draining coolant out of the radiator. Don't touch that unless you are flushing the coolant system out.
How does a Radiator Work?
The coolant is pushed through the engine, radiator and all associated hoses by a water pump; the pump varies in pressure to maximize engine cooling. The faster the fluid travels through a radiator, the less time there is for the heat exchange to happen, thus the coolant does not get much cooler. The slower the pump pushes the fluid through the coolant system, the cooler the coolant gets.
After the hot coolant has cooled, it flows out through a radiator hose and into the
heater core system.
Heater cores are essentially another type of radiator, except the air that flows though the
heater core is pumped into the vehicles cabin so it can warm the occupants. The coolant then goes through the engine block, capturing as much heat as possible and then it goes back into the radiator to dissipate the heat.
Common Radiator Components
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