Radiator Replacement
February 15, 2010 – 8:54 amHave no fear, this may be the only car related post you’ll ever see from me, as I am likely the last person you should ever take car advise from. Anyways this weekend I had the pleasure of replacing Marcia’s radiator in her 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan. I actually owe the most credit to my friend Aaron who lent his expertise and garage to do the replacement. I am not really all that much of a car guy, so Aaron did most of the actual work.
A few weeks ago Marcia had taken her van into the shop for a quick oil change and asked that they take a look at her leaky Radiator while it was in. They told her that it needed to be replaced and quoted her $600. I chatted with Aaron about the replacement and he recommend that we do it ourselves on a Saturday. A quick look at Rock Auto and I had a brand new radiator fully shipped for $120!
Before we got started Aaron did a little research online and found this great radiator fluid replacement article http://www.ehow.com/m/how_5230445_change-coolant-dodge-caravan.html. This was important because it told us how much coolant would be needed after we got the new radiator on. While doing some research we were also afforded some time to let everything cool down (if you are doing this yourself, don’t forget to let the engine cool down before working on the radiator!).
After letting it cool we drained the coolant out of the old radiator.
Then we started the process of removing all of the bolts, screws and general stuff related to the old radator. The AC unit was attached to the radiator so we had to disconnect that. It was also to our advantage to remove the fans since they were adding a lot of bulk and generally getting in the way. Once we got the radiator out we uncovered an unexpected issue with the condenser barely hanging on by the one pipe that hooked it up to the AC. Aaron suggested some JB Weld and a wire clamp setup to get everything safely and securely reattached to the support posts. You can see in the picture how nicely that worked out.
With the radiator out you can see how crappy it looked compared to the new one in the background.
Aaron really deserves the credit as he did the majority of the work, so I figured I would show at least one picture that gave the credit where it was deserved. Here he is reattaching these little push pin thingies to the splash guard under the bumper.
With that we were pretty much done. We let it run for a while and let all of the air bubbles out of the radiator and engine.
Since replacing the radiator it has been running great!
One Response to “Radiator Replacement”
It was a fun project! I was incorrect when I said that was the condensor that was just hanging in there; it was likely a transmission cooler but oh well; I didn’t bother tracing the lines. For those taking notes ended up needing 2.5 gallons of antifreeze instead of 2 as the ehow article recommended.
By Xenocide on Feb 15, 2010