Hello everyone, first post here but I've been using the forum quite a bit to help me with my recent purchase of a c5 corvette about 3 months ago! Lots of good info here, anyways I've been having some worries about my car getting a little to warm under hard driving.. just cruising and idle it stay around 192-220, fans are coming on and I just did a full coolant flush and replaced thermostat along with cleaning all my ram air ducts and everything for any debri. This definitely helped but still under heavy driving the car will reach almost
240 at times and that really worries me.. I'm considering a Dewitt radiator with the trans and oil cooler. Does anyone have any other brands they suggest and do you need to do the upgraded fans when you put in the Dewitt radiator? Or does anyone have any other suggestions on something to try to help my temps before I purchase a radiator? Im out of ideas.. seems like everything I read people say changing the puny stock radiator out helps them run about 30 degrees cooler. Thank you everyone! And what's a first post without pictures of your baby!😂

 

Welcome.

Just for your consideration:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...installed.html

Last week while stopped in crawling traffic for 30 min at 80 degrees with A/C on and temp did go above 205.

Great looking car.

Marc

 

Thank you!! Does that same company offer a tranny and oil cooler?? Figured I might as well do it all if I'm gonna be at it. Looks like a great radiator especially for the price!

 

I think this is it, but you can follow the links in my thread to find out.

Time will tell if this is a bargain or a bust. I did keep my original radiator just in case.

 

The temps sound normal. These run hot.
I installed a 160 deg thermostat and when I got my tune I had the PCM programmed to have the fans com on sooner. Now it runs under 200 deg with the stock radiator.

 

One thing I didn't mention about my reason for going with a 160 deg therm is that I live in FL where the pavement is hot and there is a lot of traffic in my area. If I had to do it again I would include a double core radiator like the one mentioned above.

The 160 deg therm is not recommended for everyone.

The OP's picture shows trees without leaves and evergreens. In that climate I would probably not run the 160 deg therm.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.. I'm located in Ohio so when I did the thermostat I just put an oem one back on. Pretty cool weather here most the time. I will try bleeding the system this weekend when I take the car out to the shop where our hoist is. That just doesn't seem like the same problem I've got going on though because I can leave this idle for half an hour and it never goes above 226. If you're out being really throttle heavy on some long straight roads the gauge almost seems to float to 240 and then as soon as you get out of it and start cruising it floats back down to 194-220

 

Not sure if you have done this yet, but crawl under and make sure there is no debris in the A/C condenser or the radiator which sits behind it. They do build a lot of junk in the radiator so if you are really ambitious you can pull it out and clean it better. Almost sounds like an air flow issue if you are heating at speed.

If you do go new, you can't go wrong with DeWitts. Very nice unit and they stand behind their product. I bought one with engine oil cooling but never needed to connect it so the ports are blocked off. If I had it to do over, I wouldn't have gotten the EOC.

 

just ordered one myself! Thank you very much for sharing that!

 

Vettenuts and 8vette7 thanks a lot! I'm going to burp the system like you said and clean the ac condenser all when the new radiator arrives! Will post back what the out come is sometime next weekend when I get to tackle it

 

Check a couple of other things as well.

1. The AC Condenser has foam seals on each side the block air flow from bypassing the condenser and radiator. Make sure they are in place. Those were one of the things that would blow out of a C5 when the cars were new. Now you have a minimum 13 year old car and those pieces of foam have probably turned to dust now.

2. The other thing you can check is your center air dam. The center air dam is spring loaded and will deflect under the car when speeds exceed 100 mph. I used to take some duct tape and wrap it around the edge of the brace that holds the center air dam and bring it over top of the air dam and stick it to the air dam. I would do this on the left and right sides and the center of the center air dam.

3. Besides cleaning the AC Condenser and Radiator how long has it been since the cooling system has been flushed and cleaned? Make sure the top third of the AC Condenser is thoroughly cleaned. A lot of grass and debris gets thrown to the top and wedges there. You may have to pull the radiator shroud so you can get in and use tools to clean dirt from between the cooling fins.

4. In traffic on a cool day your car should idle in the 200 range if the fans come on. When you are driving the car hard temps can easily reach 230 degrees unless you are driving hard on the track. Track temps can and do go higher.

5. What is your oil temp doing while of this is going on. Although an aftermarket radiator like the DeWitts is an over kill for a street driven car if you want another option then take a look at this setup: http://dougrippie.com/products/ron-d...oc-right-side/. The only problem with this setup is you will have trouble getting oil temps high enough when driving in 40 degree temps. This setup is a cooling monster. I had it in my 97 and 03Z and it would keep coolant temp at 200 degrees and oil temp at 230 when on track on the hottest days. That was with the stock thermostat. In temps in the 40s and 50s I could put my hand on the passenger side radiator tank (where the oil cooler is mounted) and the tank would feel cold to the touch.

I don't know how well the DeWitts cools but I know this one cools very well. They also have a version with an automatic trans cooler in addition to the engine oil cooler if you happen to have an automatic.

Here are some pictures of the RD Radiator that I took out of my 03Z when I sold the car in 2009. The radiator had been first installed in my 97 in 2001 and in the 03Z in 2003 so had been used for 8 years.








This is what the stock radiator looked like in comparison:




Bill