johns59super88

When I bought my 58 Super 88, the car had an external transmission cooler. The coolant had a small amount of leftover oil on the radiator cap and coating the area around the cap. The motor oil was clean with no sign of coolant mixed in. The transmission fluid was new and clean. The po was pretty sick so I didn't have much opportunity to question him.

I took the car to the best radiator shop in town and they hooked up the cooling system to a machine that cleaned and flushed everything with hot water and a cleaning agent of some kind. It came back clean and looked great. After driving a couple hundred miles with no overheating, smooth running and checking compression and everything I decided the engine was good to go and decided not to rebuild it.

Through all this I assumed the internal transmission cooler was bad and took the radiator in to have it replaced and buttoned up. They tested it and said the cooler did not leak even with three times the normal pressure. Also flushed the radiator again and proclaimed it healthy.

I will soon be installing the radiator back in the car and am trying to make sense of all that. If the internal cooler is good why did they put on the external? How else could oil have gotten in the cooling system but through the cooler? If the car runs good and has good compression, no smoke or steam, aren't the block and heads healthy? I would appreciate any thoughts on this. The engine is a 394 that clearly had been apart and looked pretty clean. Thanks!

Yellowstatue

A friend of ours accidentally put anti-freeze into his master cylinder...so someone could have added some oil into the rad.

johns59super88

@yellowstaue - Wow, never heard of that one but I suppose we can expect any type of fluid in almost any opening! Doesn't explain the external cooler and good internal cooler though. Other than putting oil in the radiator, I'm wondering how oil could have gotten into the coolant other than through the internal cooler!?

59-59-59

Maybe the threads in the radiator were screwed up? Maybe he was hauling fat women around and needed a bigger transmission cooler? Well who cares? If the shop pressure tested it and the threads look good, run it. I wouldn't lose sleep over it

rustyroger

I do a lot of towing so I always fit an external cooler to my cars (I run it with the original as well).
Could be a PO did some towing, or just wanted peace of mind. I wouldn't get paranoid about it if you aren't towing or other heavy duty driving, but I think it's a good idea to fit one anyway, any parts store will have what you need for a reasonable price.

Roger.