Clean Radiator Results, '00 Tip, 95k mi

[crwarren11]

Just wanted to post some results from recently cleaning my radiators.  After owning the car for 14 years, I finally got to this!  I didn't realize until recently how much this affects the cooling of the car.  But after going through an imploded ATF cooler which caused an intermix problem in the cooling system and caused the transmission to die, I thought I had done everything to refresh the system back to normal.  I flushed and cleaned all the coolant lines and put in a new water pump and low-temp thermostat, yet I was still getting regular readings higher than I'd like to see, in the ~205F range.  So you have some reference, this is the front of the left radiator when I got to it:

This is what dropped to the floor when I got the cover off (and what was still in the cover):

Of course, I forgot to take pictures of what was between the front radiator and the a/c radiator, but it was at least as bad.  All-in-all I figure I got about 6lbs of crapola out of there.  So, here's what's really cool.  Before doing the cleaning my temperature was regularly running into the right side of the "0", even when the outside temp was reasonable:

That was typical, even after only ~12 minutes of my daily commute to/from work.  As you can see, only 68F that day outside and it was still running hot. (Pay no attention to the time, I broke my clock adjustor several years back).  Now onto today...it's been blistering out here in Southern California and this is my temperature after driving stop and go through the city for about 20 minutes, with 102F outside:

Steady at 180F, even with pushing it pretty hard. I am seriously amazed at what a difference this has made! 

 

I've only been tinkering with cars for a few years now, so I never knew about the radiators getting clogged up and causing such a big difference in cooling efficiency.  I've tackled some pretty big projects on this Boxster and my two BMW's, but just goes to show you that if you are ignorant about something so simple then you really have no clue how to address it.  This was maybe an hour of work and a 1 out of 10 in difficulty.  I'm sure this is an obvious thing to nearly all of you, and this is why boards like this are fantastic.  I would have never known about cleaning the radiators (and many other things I've learned here) had it not been for all the contributions of time and effort to help guys like me who are just in our infancy of tinkering.  Anyway, just wanted to share my results and say a big thanks to everyone who contributes here!

[pkust]

Sure glad you posted the pictures. Last Feb. a friend and I cleaned his rads out when we replaced an engine. We had to replace the driver side radiator as the dirt that was trapped down in the lower corner had actually corroded the aluminum and had created a slight leak that kept the dirt damp all the time resulting in even further corrosion, we didn't think of photos until we were finished with the project. This goes to show if you have a suspected over heating problem don't just go for the thermostat, clean your radiators first and see the difference that will make.

Thanks for the info and pics, that is what this forum is all about, and the best one on the web......Thanks again!