So I've been searching high and low for this uuber slow coolant leak for the past month and a half. I have had the rental autozone coolant pressure tester for that long too, but it hadn't shown itself until this morning. Plugged the pressure tester on, pumped it up and heard a hissing coming from the bleeder hose on the radiator. As soon as I undid the upper radiator shroud and touched the hard line, it broke in half. Then as I was removing the rubber coupling hose, the bleeder nipple (part of the plastic end tank) broke off inside.

To be honest, I'm relieved that this was the problem. I had been dreading having to replace the head gaskets, and no other signs pointed towards them. No sweet exhaust smell, no white smoke, engine ran great.

Temporarily fixed with golf Tees until replacement rad can get here. Some will scoff, but I ordered an ebay special for 130 dollars out of a place in florida.

This is just to be able to move it in/out of the driveway.

 

2 Golf tees...... something to add to roadside emergency kit lmao....


That tiny plastic hose does become very brittle over time and some have used a rubber hose for replacement. Now if thats your only problem with the radiator you could have drilled to hole out a little bigger and used plastic weld and put a new fitting on there.

 

it doesnt matter if its $130 or $250 if it cools your truck thats great.

 

Heck I broke that last weekend
I replaced it with about $10 of rubber hose

 

yes, but you didnt break the nipple off the end tank.

 

I replaced the little hard plastic line that runs from the expansion tank to the driver side of the radiator with a piece of AutoZones finest rubber hose and screw type hose clamps about 2 years ago. No problems since! It conceals well under all the fancy plastic covers in the engine bay.

I also had to buy an expansion tank because of a crack. Got an aftermarket from Atlantic British for bout $75. The OEM was A LOT higher!

 

I thought about trying to fab something up, but I don't know that I'd trust it to hold up over time.

 

Just to update this thread. 130 dollar ebay radiator fit like a charm, looked like it was pretty good quality too.

In case anyone finds this thread searching, 2 things I did differently than the RAVE manual states:
1. I did not remove the viscous fan. It would make things a little easier if I did, but I didnt have a wrench that would fit on hand. Just means you can't move the shroud out of the way, but you have enough space to get the job done.

2. Did not disconnect the engine oil cooler. I don't know why the rave says to do this, its very easy to do it without disconnecting. Just unbolt it from the radiator and thats it.

Also replaced the thermostat since it was only 40 dollars from the dealer and it was easy enough while everything was apart.

 

I'm intrigued by the $130 radiator concept. I just found a leak in my radiator at the shroud mounting screw just above the nipple that broke off of your radiator. My wife actually texted me a picture of a little green puddle under the front of the truck asking if it could be from our vehicle. Of course, I didn't see the text until she was 25 miles into her 30 mile trip home but when I called her, she said the aftermarket temp gauge I had installed showed 200 degrees so she made it home just fine. I found coolant all over the drivers side of the radiator and when I pulled the top shroud off to check I saw coolant around the screw that holds the lower shroud to the radiator. It's the screw visible in the picture in the first post. When I removed that screw, I could see coolant slowly weeping up from the bottom of the screw hole. What the hell kind of design is that? Hmmm, let me see. I could just clamp this piece of plastic around the radiator in some fashion or I could cast a jagged hole in the plastic tank to create a point of stress concentration on a critical piece that will experience large dimensional changes resulting from huge temperature swings. Yeah, that sounds like the way to go. Holy Crap!

Well, at 94K the radiator is probably not at its best so it's not a total waste of effort and money to replace it but the fact that the radiator can fail in this manner is pretty disconcerting. For now, I mopped up the coolant, stuffed the screw hole with RTV and threaded the screw back in. The level had dropped maybe 3/4 in. in the tank, so it should be ok for a week's worth of the 3 mile commutes it sees. I'll be ordering a radiator, cap and probably a temp sender (I have SAI) tomorrow. I was leaning towards the Hella from Lucky 8, but I've found others for significantly less that come with a lifetime warranty. That isn't worth much if the radiator failure wastes the motor but hearing of your good luck with what is likely a made in China radiator is encouraging.

I'm curious to know what experiences have people had with replacement radiators.

 

Would suggest a 180F new thermostat also.