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5.3L Vortec V8 Conversion

Knock knock... anyone in the shop? :D

Just looking for options for cooling my 5.9 and found the posts on the Becool rads...

Looks like http://paceperformance.com can get them... about 30 bux cheaper than going direct... or 4x4group buy has them too...

gads that's a lot of dough for a radiator. I'm scared that it won't do the job though. The only radiator that has come close is a silly $80 stock plastic/alum replacement from O'Reilly's. A Spectra premium. Bought a champion 3 row all aluminum from ledfoot racing ($200)... no bueno. A large 2 core cbr from performance radiator ($200), also no bueno. coulda had a Becool almost paid for by now.

John D, you think this radiator in conjunction with dirtbound's triple fan will keep my mopar 5.9 cool? I'm not running dunes, just trying to run up the hills. I know you can't say for sure. Guess I should just call them and talk to them and see. SIGH.
 
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haha sorry couldn't help it.


Its definitely a plausible fix. I rebuilt an engine on a Sunbeam Tiger once, a 260 ford V8... had the radiator done at the same time and once I got it back together it was running hot. It was a down-flow radiator, and if you watched it when the t-stat opened it would rush through the radiator so fast it was vortexing and looked like a toilet flushing. Pulled it and told the radiator guy to pinch the tubes down a little and voila, problem solved.
 
if you had to do it over again, would you stick with the 5.3, or go ls1 or something else? i plan on doing a swap later in the year or early next year. i'm really hoping to get some better mpg's, i'm only getting 8-10 in my jeep right now, and it's only going to get worse.
 
Digger87xj said:
Knock knock... anyone in the shop? :D

Just looking for options for cooling my 5.9 and found the posts on the Becool rads...

Looks like http://paceperformance.com can get them... about 30 bux cheaper than going direct... or 4x4group buy has them too...

gads that's a lot of dough for a radiator. I'm scared that it won't do the job though. The only radiator that has come close is a silly $80 stock plastic/alum replacement from O'Reilly's. A Spectra premium. Bought a champion 3 row all aluminum from ledfoot racing ($200)... no bueno. A large 2 core cbr from performance radiator ($200), also no bueno. coulda had a Becool almost paid for by now.

John D, you think this radiator in conjunction with dirtbound's triple fan will keep my mopar 5.9 cool? I'm not running dunes, just trying to run up the hills. I know you can't say for sure. Guess I should just call them and talk to them and see. SIGH.
Click to expand...

You're right, I can't say for sure. However, I run the Dirtbound triple fan with mine and I don't have any issues other than when I am really smashing the dunes. And that only starts to become an issue after like 6 long hard (5500 RPM) climbs in a row. It recovers pretty quickly.

Vanimal said:
if you had to do it over again, would you stick with the 5.3, or go ls1 or something else? i plan on doing a swap later in the year or early next year. i'm really hoping to get some better mpg's, i'm only getting 8-10 in my jeep right now, and it's only going to get worse.
Click to expand...

I would do the 6.0 if I was going to do it again. I have already done a bunch of performance tuning my 5.3 and I am now looking at a cam/spring upgrade to get even more. As far as mileage though, I have never really even thought about it.
 
Thanks for the response .. that is encouraging to hear.
I am a little discouraged with the airflow from the dirtbound kit though. I really thought it would be more . They just don't seem to draw the air or seem as loud as I thought they would be. Maybe it's me but they just seem a little anemic.
 
I'm running the dirtbound three fan setup as well on my 3.0L turbo, and my only complaint is the fans do leave something to be desired...though not as much as the super cheap ebay fans. Two of the fans that came with the kit have broken a blade and had to be replaced. The ebay fans pull even less air. I personally think the solution is to get 3 nice fans and bolt them to Dirtbound's shroud setup.
 
John D said:
I would do the 6.0 if I was going to do it again. I have already done a bunch of performance tuning my 5.3 and I am now looking at a cam/spring upgrade to get even more. As far as mileage though, I have never really even thought about it.
Click to expand...
I just figured i'm getting 8-10mpg driving my jeep, and 8-12 flat towing it behind my chevy van with a 300k mile 210hp 350. an ls/vortec is more efficient than my tired old 350, so i should at least get 15mpg driving the jeep with an ls/vortec in it.
 
10" spal puller is showing 802 cfm... x 3 is a total of 2406 cfm unladen

Dirtbound claims an average of 4336 cfm with theirs... installed on a radiator

Average: 4,336.23
Min: 4,077
Max: 4,650


I'm cornfused how they can get that much out of 10" fans.. I can't find any that even come close to the same cfm they claim.
 
John D said:
These do look a lot differrent than the Hooker headers I used. Even with paying extra for the headers, I still think this is money well spent being able to use Novak's mounts. Remember I spent a month on my mounts...



Consider this, the donor vehicle was configured so that each side of the exhaust came out of the manifold, passed an O2 sensor, through a cat, and passed another O2 sensor, then it combines with the other side through a "Y". Are you going to run two cats? If you are running only one you would want to configure the system using only one downstream O2 sensor. I originally designed mine with four O2 sensors and one cat, I was thinking better fuel mgmt also. Then one day I started to wonder how the downstream O2 sensors are going to make the proper adjustments if they don't know what side is rich/lean? So now I am thinking to get the best performance/fuel mgmt, I need to have a three O2 sensor system (two upstream, one downstream). I do not have the brain to program one downstream sensor out and have the computer look for only the other one, but I am told by programmers that this is easy for them to do. I think if you are not going to take the time to do a three sensor system, you might as well just do a two sensor system. Now, if you are going to run two cats, forget everything I said.
Click to expand...

Just FYI, the downstream O2 sensors do not play a part in fuel management, they monitor the health of the catalytic converter. This was part of the requirements of OBDII.
 
John D said:
I'm not sure that's 100% correct, but I deleted downstream O2 sensors anyway.
Click to expand...

I thought it was 100% accurate until I started digging a bit. It looks like ther e is some fuel management assigned to these O2 sensors in order to maintain cataylst health and to deal with aging catalysts.
 
Aggie_Cobra said:
I thought it was 100% accurate until I started digging a bit. It looks like ther e is some fuel management assigned to these O2 sensors in order to maintain cataylst health and to deal with aging catalysts.
Click to expand...

Yep.
Historically, downstream o2 sensors did nothing at all for fuel management.
Nowadays, they have an ever-increasing role in it - though still not nearly so much a role as the upstream.
 
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