hi,
wife came home last night saying the car was steaming and very hot. today as i looked at it i see a crack near the upper hose. is this something some epoxy can cure? if not, what are good sources for a radiator?
tia, peter
Once the black plastic top tank turns green, it's brittle and ready to break. You're lucky it lasted this long, and that it wasn't catastrophic.
Replace it with a new all-brass double-core radiator. You can buy one online for $130 or less. It will be for an automatic Miata, so will have more cooling capacity. Just ignore the transmission cooler in the bottom.
Yes, that's a popular source.
While you're in there, you might want to replace every water hose on the engine. Definitely replace the two in the front while you're in there; the labor for that part is completely free, since you're going to have to disconnect them to replace the radiator anyway. Replacing the heater hoses on the back of the engine is more work, but shortly after I replaced my radiator one of the heater hoses on the back of the engine blew out, and then immediately after I fixed that, the other one blew out as well. If I had got all the hoses done when I did the radiator it would have saved me some money and a lot of effort and hassle.
Another suggestion; OEM hoses cost more, but they actually fit correctly so they're worth it. However, I was quoted $450 for the OEM radiator, which is crazy.
yrs jp
While the plastic tanks can be replaced with metal tanks, the labor cost runs the total price up there, to the point that a brand new aftermarket radiator with metal tanks is usually less expensive. I have a 99, and, early on, replaced the perfectly good stock radiator. The last GM failure was on a 96 Impala at about 90 thousand miles and 9 years of use. (I inherited the car.)
My reas> >> hi,
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