thermochill or heatercore

whats better, the heatercore or the thermochill products.

HC= cheaper, good performance. TC= real radiator, expensive, maybe better performance...

hmmm....."maybe better performance"

Depends on what models you are talking about? 120.3 vs D-Tek core? How much room do you have? This question is WAY TOO VAGUE.

the ThermoChill HE120.2-3 and the heatercore from here:http://www.dangerden.com/mall/Radiators/heatercore.asp

nikhsub1 said:

Depends on what models you are talking about? 120.3 vs D-Tek core? How much room do you have? This question is WAY TOO VAGUE.

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lets say the 120.3 and king of standard HC the 77B-Ville

Im goning to say cause of the surface area of the 120.3 that it preforms
a little better but not by much
theres also the cost of a 120.3 to take into account


I realy cant wait for some tests on these two

haven't seen a side-by-side as of yet but one thing that concerns me about the thermochill 120.3 is the amount of standoff (or rather the lack thereof) with the shroud. It only has 10mm of standoff.

that puts some interesting numbers into play - the 120.3 is maybe 20% larger (probably a little less than 20%) than the 77 b'ville with ac but a proper shroud on a b'ville core can increase its performance by as much as 40%.

also, if you desolder the fittings on a b'ville core, you can replace the factory tubes with 1/2"ID copper pipe (tygon or clearflex60 1/2" ID will stretch over it) and get a bump in waterflow over the fittings that are used on the 120.3 (last time I checked, they were 3/8" ID and 1/2" OD).

someone send me a 120.3 so I can do a side by side test.

of course, for the cost of the 120.3, you could run dual '77 b'ville cores get better cooling and still have beer money left over.

but then theres the room factor
even the UFO couldnt fit dual B-Villes
hmm but maybe a B-ville and chevette

I'll say this much, if both rads were in front of you and after having analyzed and a chance to inspect the two, I gaurentee you the Thermochill will be the one gettin' all the "love".

mR|bUNgLe said:

but then theres the room factor
even the UFO couldnt fit dual B-Villes
hmm but maybe a B-ville and chevette

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tell you for sure on that one soon - I have a UFO on the way to me and several cores on hand.

is it the 1203 moddle

Im trying to get my hands on one but there all sold out @ Mountin-mods

more airflow on the 120.3 and more surface area... not a fair comparison is it?

that's just it, with 10mm of shroud standoff, I doubt that much of the extra surface area is being used. a 10mm standoff is not going to have a huge impact on the dead spots under the fans much less get rid of them entirely. That short of a standoff is bad juju for cores - bigtime.

also, the waterchannels on the 120.3 move straight down the core where the cores on the b'ville zigzag down the core. Does anyone have one of the thermochill 120.3 cores? from the pics, it looks like they only have 11 waterchannels where the b'ville has 12.

king of rads? pfffffffft.

weapochill 120.4...or 120.8 if you use both sides.

I got a stupid question
which heater core preforms better the 2-302 (77 B-Ville) or 2-342 (74 suburban I think) ?

I cant seem to find the thread on single vs dual pass

am I right in assuming its the 77 B-Ville, cause thats what were comparing the HE120.3 to ?

mR|bUNgLe said:

I got a stupid question
which heater core preforms better the 2-302 (77 B-Ville) or 2-342 (74 suburban I think) ?

I cant seem to find the thread on single vs dual pass

am I right in assuming its the 77 B-Ville, cause thats what were comparing the HE120.3 to ?

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1st, it's not a stupid question - but it is kind of a bastage to answer without typing a short book.

the 77 b'ville with ac (aka 2-302) v. the 2-342 (from lots of c-10 chevy trucks and the like):
Provided the pump in the loop can move enough water through the system, the 2-302 will outperform the 342 from my somewhat limited testing of the two cores. That was with a pump that moves one helluva lot more water with higher head than what most have in their systems. The performance difference was not huge but it is there. One core was plugged in and tested, the water was returned to the same temp and the other was plugged in and tested, rinse and repeat as needed. Both had similar shrouds 1.25" standoff, venturi-style, split-chamber,etc. etc. with dual SanAce 120mm fans.

At some point, the performance difference tapers off with less water flow/head as the 342 does not have as much flow restriction so it can really shine with a so-so pump. still, the b'ville, despite the higher restriction of dual pass, can also perform very well with less flow provided the pump still has adequate head.

Slight bit of unintentional cheating in favor of both cores during the test - I had already modded both cores with new fittings when I decided to see how close they would run with one another. If you just took them and chopped the off the factory pipes and hooked them to tubing....well, I'm not really sure on that one even though the flow mods to the inlets and outlets were virtually identical, they likely play out a little differently on a dual pass than on single pass. Basically, both cores were running with more flow than they normally would have had and both were ran on a pump that could force more water through them than most.

That being said, it took a little while to notice much of a difference but that difference ended up being in the b'ville's favor or so claimed an array of inline water temp sensors. I have had a rematch set for some time with a pump that would produce more common levels of flow and head but that has been setting on the backburner due to other projects that had $$ supporting their completion and, more recently, getting aboard the crew at an OC/mod site.

I suppose I will have to buy two new cores, chop the factory pipes on both, test and retest, then mod the fittings on one, test it, mod the fittings on the other and then test it and then test them against one another again so I can try to make sense of the last head to head with these cores. that's gonna suck up some time...