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Radiator failure rate?

723 views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  Superaero 
#1 ·
Question: if you leave the radiator drain plug alone and have always kept your car in top condition, is there a point when you would expect a Saab radiator to fail?

Reason I ask is I will have it all apart soon to work on the intercooler, and this summer the car will be driven fast across Europe and over the Alps, and a breakdown far from home can be costly. I'm also likely to do one or more sessions on the Nurburgring involving the full track with 12 laps non-stop, which will give the cooling system a real workout.

My radiator is approaching 14yrs old, car has 87k miles and has overheated badly once. I replaced all the hoses three years ago, and the coolant has always been changed every two years and it has been flushed-out and chemically cleaned.
 
#2 ·
Do the 2.3l 9000 use the same radiator as the original 2.0l did? If so, they tend to fail at the plastic end caps, which become brittle with age and crack. However, the one on my old '87 didn't fail until something like 270k miles and 17 years old. It had also been run very hot just once, when the water pump was failing, though it never quite overheated (into the red zone). At 87k miles, I would feel pretty confident about the radiator.
 
#3 ·
Aaron Gilbert said:
Do the 2.3l 9000 use the same radiator as the original 2.0l did? If so, they tend to fail at the plastic end caps, which become brittle with age and crack. However, the one on my old '87 didn't fail until something like 270k miles and 17 years old. It had also been run very hot just once, when the water pump was failing, though it never quite overheated (into the red zone). At 87k miles, I would feel pretty confident about the radiator.
Radiator part numbers are different, but the design appears to be the same.

It is exactly the plastic end tanks going suddenly that I fear...
 
#4 ·
Mine didn't go suddenly, exactly. At the aforementioned mileage, I came home after some spirited driving which got the engine good and hot. I smelled coolant as I stepped out of the car in my garage. I opened the hood and didn't see anything leaking or steaming or otherwise amiss. For some reason, I had the thought to check the upper radiator hose, even though it was not that old and looked fine. Upon squeezing the hose, coolant started spraying all over from cracks in the plastic end cap (driver's side). Once I let go of the hose, the coolant loss subsided, and never reappeared until I had the shop replace the radiator a few weeks later. Supposedly you make a temporary fix to that type of failure with some JB weld or similar over the cracked end cap.
 
#5 ·
Most usual failure of the plastic ned tanks is at the hot inlet where the upper rad hose clamps to the "nipple" pipe that sticks out at the top right of the rad (looking at the engine compartment from the front).


The other failure modes include gasket failure as the gaskets harden with age but I've not heard of SAAB rads doing this, and cracking of the tanks.

Basically at 14 years you are approaching the service life of the radiator. The old brass jobs needed rodding and boiling at thes sorts of ages but the aluminum/plastic composite rads are designed to be replaced and thrown away.

My 86 rad lasted 16 years at least and then the upper rad hose connection cracked off clean at the clamp.

Basically, you need one new rad during the life of the car, if that. So, if you plan on keeping the car for ten more years I'd put a new rad in. If you plan on keeping the car only two more years it'll probably last! It's abit like batteries. Sure you might get six years out of a battery but four to five is more normal for these turbos. If you replace a suspect battery one year early you still end up buying only the one replacement in ten years.
 
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