Painted radiator???

[VA72C10]

I have seen some painted radiators and love the look but i'm wondering if there is a detremental effect to the performance of the radiator by doing that. I can't fit an aluminum radiator in the budget and the current one is almost new so i'm thinking of painting it. I will be painting the inner fenders and rad support and don't want it sticking out as well. Can/should i just paint the ends and mask off the fins so they don't get paint on them? Any detailed pictures of painted radiators? Thanks

[VA72C10]

One for reference

[Sequoyah]

You can buy paint made for this application that won't hurt the ability to disperse heat. I bought some from Eastwoods...haven't used it yet.

[VA72C10]

How do you get it to match the body paint as in the two tone truck above? I plan for all my under hood parts to be blue with chrome or billet and a black firewall.

[68gmsee]

I had a radiator shop rod out my radiator many years back and they spray painted the radiator and fins black. I asked about it and they told me they did that to all of them for the look. To be honest, I don't remember it affecting my cooling.

Recently, however, I've heard that painting the fins will reduce cooling capacity. I don't know why you couldn't paint the rest of the radiator to your liking, though.

[Longhorn Man]

they are painted at the factory, they get painted every time a rad shop messes with it... it's fine.
If your rad has been painted more than once or twice, you may want to have a rad shop drop it in the boil out tank and then hose it off for you... then when you paint it, go easy on the fins... don't 'glob' it on there.
They are designed to be painted, so yeah, you'll be fine as long as you don't get stupid with it.

[VA72C10]

Thanks. That was my thinking but i always here people say you can't.

[ed2552]

I've seen a lot of people who painted their aluminum radiators black on the front to hide it, keep a sleeper look going

[Longhorn Man]

we have an in house rad shop where I work, we have customers that call us from 100+ miles away on a regular basis, and even some customers that are 150 miles out. Many tell me we are the best in the state. i don't know about that... but I do know our rad guys know what they are doing.
So ignore those other peopl, and go ahead and paint the sucker, just don't glob it on there.
I'll see if I can dig up the pic i tool last summer of one of the big rads we got to worlk on... it wouldn't even fit in the bay door.

*edit*
Here's a med sized one... we get 4 or 5 of these a month;

[Longhorn Man]

well, I can't find any photos of the BIG one we had... but we get one or two of these ones a year. This had to be delivered to us on a low boy trailer, and they had to rent a modile crane(one of those 8 wheeled crane trucks) to unload it. The bill was over 4 grand in labor, and I think 3 grand in parts. They were ready to hug us becouse it woulda cost 20,000 to replace, and NO ONE would even consider fixing it. It was brought in from West Virginia.

You can see it was 6 rows deep, I think I counted 60 wide... times 4 panels

[LuckyHenriksen]

Damn what do they use those big boys for

[Longhorn Man]

I think the smaller one was for an earth mover type machinery, the bigger one was for some sort of generator engine. I don't know what the heck they needed to make that much power for... but there it is.
Like I said, the huge one we had wouldn't even go in the bay door there, the one photoed there would have, but there wasn't enough space for it at the time they were unloading.

[special-K]

You can only paint them black.....................................................J/K!!!

[70GMCer]

Originally Posted by VA72C10

Thanks. That was my thinking but i always here people say you can't.

Like Longhorn said......just don't put on heavy coats. One light coat just to cover it. To my knowledge, radiators have always been painted. (except the new alum ones)