expanded radiator

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Asram1500

Junior Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2016
Posts
1
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0
Ram Year
2001
Engine
4.7
Ok folks. New to this forum and looking for some help. I have an 01 ram 1500 with the 4.7 v8. About 3 years ago i replaced both head amd gaskets, water pump, fan clutch, thermostat, and radiator. Everything has been great up untill a few weeks ago when i noticed i didnt have any heat. Didnt mess with it as i have another car to drive. With winter coming i would like both my vehicles to have heat. Popped the hood and removed the coolant cap. Bone dry. The passenger floor is also bone dry as my first guess was the heater core leaking. Looked a little closer. The radiator has expanded in several spots. The path ways where the coolant flows from side to side have literally expanded and spearated the cooling fins. It looks like they have blown up with air. Ill try to post a picture. My question....where is all my coolant? And why does my radiator look like its gonna explode? Thanks for any help.
 

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dudeman2009

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
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Location
Arizona
Ram Year
2001 1500 Sport with enough electrical modifications to make my brain hurt
Engine
Magnum 360
Thats a first on a car/light truck. I've seen this on diesels that have had their water pump fail, resulting in coolant boiling and eventually blowing a line or pressure tank cap. All the coolant is gone probably because there is a head or intake gasket leak along the coolant passages or a rubber line somewhere has been damaged to the point of releasing coolant.

The radiator should be replaced, its possible that there is a blockage in there, or now a failure of the welds.

If I were you, i'd pull the heads and inspect the gasket for damage at this point. Then its probably a good idea to run a flow test on the water pump. There are a few ways to do this, the easiest of which is to just goto home depot or a marine store and get clear tubing and a male to male adapter. Then you can attach one side of the clear tube to the upper radiator, and put the male to male adapter between the black hose and the clear hose. Either remove the thermostat or get it up to operating temperature to check flow rate. (do this before taking it apart the first time, no reason to do all that work without knowing if there is still a problem or not) I cant remember what the name of the thing was, but we would put it inline with the radiator hose on the semi's, it had a type of flowmeter on it that would indicate if there was flow that was widely out of range.
 
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